Redmond (WA) - Microsoft plans to release a critical, immediate patch for its Windows 2000 SP4, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008 operating systems. This patch comes outside of Microsoft's normal montly patch cycle due to its severity. A webcast is planned later today at 4pm EDT to explain the critical nature of this emergency patch.





Not often



The last time Microsoft released an out-of-cycle patch was in April 3, 2007. It addressed an issue with the mouse pointer. In that bug, a malformed animation file (.ANI file) used for in-motion mouse pointers could be created which allowed an attacker to take control of the system.



In the April 3, 2007 release, Microsoft had already reported wide-spread use of the bug which is why the patch came just one week before the normal cycle. The same critical release also addressed several additional bugs which were unrelated tot he .ANI issue.


See our follow-up article on the releases of a critical out-of-band patch for MS08-067.