Five "new critical flaws" in its software were announced by Microsoft October 15, and the company quickly provided patches to keep the hackers from exploiting it by way of anything similar to the Blaster worm which bedeviled Microsoft users over the summer.
Microsoft told Reuters and other news organizations that this announcement was part of a new plan to publicize security patches more regularly for a broad range of Microsoft software.
The patches apply to Microsoft Exchange, Windows, Windows Messenger, and Microsoft multimedia software, with the flaws said to affect business and individual users, although Messenger is typically a business application with very few private consumers using it. The company announced seven security problems all told on October 15, and the patches were posted for download almost immediately afterward.
While Microsoft is trying to make it easier for businesses and consumers to apply update patches, Microsoft critics say the real solution is just designing better and more secure software. That, in fact, was also the message intended by Blaster, the early versions of which included in its coding a message demanding Bill Gates just build safer programs.
