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Unofficial WMF Fix; Microsoft WMF Patch Leaked
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-04
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The big ugly known as the WMF exploit continues to be a point of nervous pessimism as many XP users wait for Microsoft to release their fix as part of the patch day package. Even though an unofficial patch has been floating around for a couple of days, the official fix, planned for release on Jan. 10th, leaked out on Wednesday.
 | | WMF Fixes Circulating |  |
The exploit has many techies nervous until an unofficial patch surfaced. A gentleman named Ilfak Guilfanov came up with the unofficial fix over the New Year's weekend. SANS is advising people to go with that fix and not wait for patch Tuesday.
On Wednesday however, a leak (hah) occurred of the official fix from Microsoft. According to Sunbelt's Blog, Alex Eckelberry quoted Steve Gibson:
Microsoft's OFFICIAL SECURITY UPDATE leaked onto the Internet early (and it works great!)
It would seem that we can be pretty certain that Microsoft will have this WMF vulnerability mess cleaned up shortly. Microsoft's cryptographically signed and authentic (though perhaps not final), security update addressing this vulnerability has prematurely leaked onto the Internet.
While the worms are still out there, this should help minimize problems for Windows XP. At this point, either patch should work although it should be noted folks may want to go to the Microsoft patch site on Tuesday to fix the problem.
With Windows Vista due out later this year, one hopes security will be stronger on the new system than it's been with XP and previous versions of Windows.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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