The Microsoft Security Bulletin Advanced Notification for March 2012 covers six bulletins which include one critical, four important, and one moderate. Bulletin 1 is labeled as critical and affects all Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2

This means the critical bulletin will affect all organizations and consumers.

Organizations will have to reboot after applying the critical patch, which indicates that it is fix for a kernel level bug. There are two important bulletins that effect the Windows family as well.

Bulletin 6 is labeled as moderate and only affects Windows operating systems post Windows 2003 Server. This means Bulletin 6 addresses issues which were introduced with Windows Vista.

Bulletin 4 affects Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. This bulletin addresses Visual Studio flaw which can result in a privilege escalation.

Bulletin 5 is labeled important and addresses remote code execution in Microsoft Expression Design, which is a vector graphics editor that competes with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. This issue is probably related to malicious file formats that could result in a compromise of system running the software.

The Microsoft Expression Design bulletin will affect a small amount of consumers and organizations because of the limited distribution of the product.


Author: Marcus Carey, security researcher at Rapid7.