Hey folks – Mike Reavey here stepping in for Craig as he continues to work through some last minute issues on this Tuesday’s release. Today we’ve released two Security Bulletins. The first one, MS06-002 resolves a vulnerability in Font processing in Windows and is rated Critical. The second bulletin, MS06-003 is also rated Critical, and applies to Office and Exchange customers, and resolves an issue in Transport Neutral Encapsulation (TNEF). We’re actively working through a delay on getting the MS06-003 updates to propagate through the global servers for Microsoft Update and WSUS. We expect the updates to be on-line and ready by 12:00PM Pacific Time. For folks using the ITMU and SMS, the catalog will be live for the entire release once the issues are resolved. Estimated time is 1:30PM Pacific Time. In the meantime, the updates are available on the Microsoft Download Center and can be accessed from the links with in the Security Bulletin. For folks using Windows Update, SUS, and SMS with MBSA 1.2 there are no delays for any packages.
One question we get when there are delays is “Why not hold everything, until it all goes at the same time, everywhere?” We always aim for that as a goal and when we’re aware of the delays before propagation begins we do work to sync it all up. However, in order to hit a 10AM target through all systems, we have to publish through several independent channels at once, in parallel. In today’s case, pausing the posting of updates to the Download Center and Windows Update to wait for the posting to Microsoft Update would actually have resulted in a delay in these updates appearing on the Download Center and Windows Update as we reset the release process. This means we would then see the updates appear first on Microsoft Update ahead of the Download Center and Windows Update. Based on this, we’ve gone ahead and released the bulletin for MS06-003 so folks would be able to read and understand the issues being resolved in detail while we continued pushing through Microsoft Update.
Updated: 10 January 2006 2:44 PM PT
Quick update folks – I wanted to let everyone know that all the updates for MS06-003 went live on Microsoft Update at 12:00PM as expected, and the catalog for the ITMU http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/downloads/2003/tools/msupdates.mspx is now live as well. Thanks very much for your patience.
Also, I know there was a question out there about the behavior of the WMF update through autoupdate, just wanted to be clear that the update behaves just like any update released through automatic update and will respect your existing settings regarding prompting for a restart or automatic restart, depending on what you have chosen.
*This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.*