Patch Tuesday: XP SP 2, Windows Help Center Patches Coming

Tuesday Microsoft said it will patch the critical Windows Help and Support Center vulnerability that has been widely attacked. This month's Patch Tuesday will also the last day of support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2.According to Microsoft's advanced bulletin notification, the company will patch a critical vulnerability in Windows Help and Support Center. The flaw has been under attack for about a month. It's be a good idea to test this patch and get in into place as soon as possible. This was Microsoft's assessment of the situation from last month: "We've been monitoring for active attacks on the Windows Help and Support Center vulnerability (CVE-2010-1885) since the advisory was released on June 10th. At first, we only saw legitimate researchers testing innocuous proof-of-concepts. Then, early on June 15th, the first real public exploits emerged. Those initial exploits were targeted and fairly limited. In the past week, however, attacks have picked up and are no longer limited to specific geographies or targets, and we would like to ensure that customers are aware of this broader distribution."

Chances are that the attacks have only grown progressively worse since. On Tuesday Microsoft will also release three other patches: one for Windows XP and Server 2003, and two for its Office productivity software.

This update will also be the last update for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2. If you plan on using XP SP 2, you'd better hope that no more vulnerabilities are discovered going forward. Chances of that, however, are slim. So at the very least it's time to upgrade to SP3, or Windows 7.