Microsoft critical security patches

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Microsoft last night released three sets of security patches, the most important of which aims to address flaws in Microsoft Virtual Machine (VM) which it admits could enable system compromise.

The VM patch is designed to address eight vulnerabilities, the most serious of which would enable an attacker to gain control over a user's system. That's possible because of a vulnerability that means an untrusted Java applet could access COM objects.

patch description here

Next up there's a patch for a privilege elevation flaw - a particular Windows message, called WM_TIMER. Because of this problem an attacker able to log onto a target machine could gain administrator privileges.

The issue affects Windows NT 4.0, NT 4.0 Terminal Server, Win 2K and Win XP.

patch description here

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Seems like there's a new one of these darned things every week.

When does it end? (not a rhetorical question, really want to know)