Earlier this month Microsoft decided to push their February Patch Tuesday updates into next month despite a couple of pending security concerns that needed to be addressed.
According to reports, this delay was due to some internal issue in preparing the patches for distribution so the company opted to delay the updates rather than issue patches that may have caused issues for customers.
While delaying routine patches such as the normal monthly cumulative update for Windows 10 is not a big deal, there was a bug with the SMB protocol in Windows that could be used in a Denial of Service attack and it was expected to be patched this month however, that fix is also part of the delayed Patch Tuesday.
Although the Redmond company delayed that security patch, one area that is getting addressed through an out of band update for Windows is an update for Adobe Flash.
Microsoft pushed out this fix for the Flash vulnerability yesterday under Knowledge Base article KB4010250 (MS17-005).
This patch applies to the following versions of Windows:
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows 10
- Windows 10 Version 1511
- Windows 10 Version 1607
- Windows 8.1
- Windows RT 8.1
MS17-005 is rated as a critical so it is recommended that you install it at your earliest opportunity.
There is still no word or indication from Microsoft on whether they might issue additional out of band updates to address the SMB protocol issue before the arrival of Patch Tuesday in March which is scheduled for the 14th.
However, there is a work around to keep someone from exploiting the SMB protocol bug on your system.
According to the Software Engineering Institutes vulnerability note on this you can block outbound SMB connections from your local network to the wide area network and disable connections on TCP ports 139 and 145 plus UDP ports 137 and 138.
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