I hope you are using your time off to do something more interesting than install patches. However, by now, Microsoft's AutoUpdate will probably have downloaded this month's bug fix, MS06-015, and it is not one to miss: it fixes one particularly critical and threating problem (remote COM code execution triggerd by a Web site). There's an extra note for some Hewlett-Packard PC users on Microsoft's security blog.
Mozilla Corp has also released a heap of security patches which are also important because of the possibility that some could be exploited by malicious Web sites. According to TechWeb News:
Mozilla unveiled Firefox 1.5.0.2, which included 7 patches, 5 of them critical. It also unveiled 11 new patches for the older Firefox 1.5, 15 for the even older Firefox 1.0x line in an update numbered 1.0.8, and 19 in the Sea Monkey browser suite, the replacement for the now-defunct Mozilla suite. (Note: Tallies exceed the total of 18 patches because some were applied to more than one version.)
Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia tagged the overall updates -- to Firefox 1.5.0.2 and 1.08, and Sea Monkey 1.0.1 -- as "Highly critical," its second-from-the-top ranking. That ranking was the same as Secunia awarded Tuesday's 10-bug patch for IE.
Mozilla is urging all Firefox users to move to v1.5, which includes an auto-update feature.
Opera has also released a new version that fixes a security hole.
