From Sci-Tech Today…

Two weeks after a third-party vendor issued a temporary patch to fix a critical security vulnerability in the Internet Explorer Web browser, Microsoft has released a whopper of a monthly patch that includes a fix for the Internet Explorer flaw. The megapatch also includes fixes for nine other flaws, of varying severity, found in Outlook Express, FrontPage, and SharePoint.

In the Security Bulletin announcing the fixes, the software giant acknowledged that eight of the 10 flaws could allow a hacker to take complete control of a computer running unpatched software. To do so, the attacker would have to set up a Web site with malicious code and inveigle the unsuspecting user to visit the site.

The good part, said Rob Ayoub, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, is that these vulnerabilities finally were fixed. He also said that this monthly round of patches is surprising in that the updates apply to so many computer users. Some 90 percent of computer users run Microsoft Windows and the Internet Explorer browser…