Twelve updates coming next Tuesday outta Redmond as part of their montly patch cycle. Luckily (?) only one of them has a "critical" rating.

"The Redmond company warned that one of the Windows bulletins would change the way Internet Explorer handles ActiveX controls, regardless of whether or not the user had applied a patch designed to give developers more time to adjust the new method."

On the security front today, we've got a major vulnerability in Symantec's anti-virus software. The flaw, discovered by eEye, would allow someone to take complete control of a remote machine without any user interaction. Coverage at eWeek, PCWorld, & VNUNet.

Also, a "moderately critical" vulnerability has been discovered in WordPress that would allow a the host server to be compromised. The only fix currently is to create an .htaccess file to restrict access to a couple of directories in the WP hierarchy.

Apparently Vista's firewall will only be half-way enabled at shipping due to demand from major corporations for control at the administrative level. What I don't understand is why they don't just do this for the "business" editions, & fully enable it for the "home" editions. There are like five different flavors of Vista coming, aren't there?

"When Windows Vista is released early next year its firewall will be set to only block incoming traffic even though it will be capable of blocking outgoing traffic. According to a statement from Microsoft, the firewall's protection will be curbed in order to make life easier for the company's enterprise customers."