Six security bulletins have been issued by Microsoft for the month of December, which brings the total for 2009 to 74, compared to 77 in 2008 and 78 in 2006.

Three of these bulletins were rated “critical and two “important.”
The security update for the year fixes 12 vulnerabilities, with the most urgent one being a zero-day flaw in the Internet Explorer web browser.

Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs said any of the critical vulnerabilities could let an attacker gain full control over a vulnerable Windows computer. He said, “Business users need to have a risk management strategy in place to prioritise the patches.

MS09-072 is the most critical of the three critical patches, affecting all versions of Internet Explorer, said Matthew Walker, regional director UK & Ireland at Lumension. “This, combines with updates issued by Apple for Java for OS X, Adobe’s Flash Player and AIR, makes this month particularly important for IT departments to shore-up patches and protect against web-borne malware threats.”

MS09-072 is likely to have the greatest impact on end users as it affects all IT environments using Internet Explorer (6, 7 and 8), specifically impacting Windows 7, Vista and XP which will all require a restart, said Walker.

MS09-071, affects Windows Server 2008 and requires a restart.

Walker stated, “Although Microsoft’s exploitability scale for this bulletin is less severe, as Windows Server 2008 is most commonly deployed in support of mission critical applications, this update has the potential to be severely disruptive to business operations.”

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The long-running antitrust case against Microsoft has been dropped by the European Commission. Microsoft has now agreed to offer European customers a choice in web browsers.

Microsoft’s practice of bundling its own Internet Explorer web browser with Windows operating systems was the reason for the antitrust case. The EU claimed this practice was thwarting innovation in the industry and denying customers a free choice. The EC had imposed fines of over two billion dollars.

According to the terms agreed upon today, Microsoft will offer a choice of up to 12 different browsers on their systems. They will offer Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome.

Microsoft will also make available a ‘Choice Screen’ in the European Economic Area for five years, to allow users of XP, Vista and Windows 7 to decide which browser they want to install.

Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, said, “Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use. Such choice will not only serve to improve people’s experience of the internet now but also act as an incentive for web browser companies to innovate and offer people better browsers in the future.”

The makers of the Opera browser, which currently accounts for around 2% of the total browser market, hailed the victory for European consumers.

Jon von Tetzchner, Opera CEO said, “This decision is a celebration of open web standards, as these shared guidelines are the necessary ingredients for innovation on the web.”

Opera made the original complaint against Microsoft in 2007.

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