Microsoft's Security Disclosures Come Under Fire

Is Microsoft silently fixing security vulnerabilities and deliberately obfuscating details about patches in its monthly security bulletins?

Matthew Murphy, a security researcher who has worked closely with the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) in the past, is accusing the software maker of "misleading" customers by not clearly spelling out exactly what is being patched in the MS06-015 bulletin released on April 11. That bulletin, rated "critical," contained patches for a remote code execution hole in Windows Explorer, the embedded file manager that lets Windows users view and manage drives, folders and files.

However, as Murphy found out when scouring through the fine print in the bulletin, the update also addressed what Microsoft described as a "publicly disclosed variation" of a flaw that was reported in May 2004 (CVE-2004-2289.)

In an entry posted to the SecuriTeam blog, Murphy noted that the vulnerability that is documented was privately reported, but the "variation" that was also patched has been publicly known for 700+ days.