What is Patch Tuesday?

Patch Tuesday sounds like a weekly sale at a quilting supply store. But it’s more critical to IT professionals and hackers, than to quilters. It falls on the second Tuesday of every month. And it’s the regularly scheduled date for software juggernaut Microsoft® to release “security bulletins” and “patches” (or fixes) for discovered vulnerabilities (or bugs) in its various software products. Hackers lie at the ready to pick apart the issued patches, and exploit Microsoft products and users.

Other software makers issue patches for their products too, of course, but rarely with the regimented frequency of Microsoft. For example, Oracle® issues patches with some regularity for its server-database software, but Adobe®, makers of pervasive applications like Acrobat®, Reader®, and Flash® Player (plagued in recent months by attackers) doesn’t issue patches on a known schedule.

Who Issues Security Updates?

While Patch Tuesday has historically referred to Microsoft’s security bulletins, the term is increasingly used to describe the date when any software maker plans to release a slew of security updates.

Computer users need to pay attention to Patch Tuesdays much more closely than in the past, advises Steven M. Christey, a security engineer at the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit tech consultancy that advises U.S. government departments.

“The window has shrunk between [the time] when a vendor releases a patch, and when attackers begin to take advantage of the underlying vulnerability,” Christey explains.

Hackers Move in After Patch Tuesday

After most Patch Tuesdays, MITRE engineers see exploit programs surface within days, or sometimes even hours. These programs take advantage of two or more separate vulnerabilities. It used to take months for hackers to do this sort of thing, but not anymore.

Adding a Wild West quality to Patch Tuesday, Microsoft issued a bounty on a hacker’s head in the first quarter of 2009: $250,000 for information on the author of the Conficker worm, which reportedly infected over one million PCs in under 24-hours in January. It has since grown to infect some 10 million, and opens the door for hackers to execute remote code, and disable several security products on infected machines, such as Windows® Automatic Update, Windows Security Center, Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting—key features in the fight against compromising attacks.

So, we know that hackers are creative. But so are security professionals. Even the government is getting in on the action. The Department of Homeland Security is tracking computer security trends. And a lot of the information they receive is coming from the tech-savvy public (as in: you). For the latest information, check out the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

Conclusion

Hackers are always at the ready to fight ways to exploit holes in computer systems. To keep your system safe from harm, update your security software whenever prompted, and mark Patch Tuesday in your calendar.

Related Links

The Conficker Worm
Threat Evolution
Filling in the Holes – Protect Your PC From Port Scanning