Patch Tuesday August 2023: scorching hot security updates for your small business.
Patch Tuesday August 2023
What is Patch Tuesday? Many tech vendors release security updates on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. If you’re not sure what you should be patching or why, read the Patch Primer for Small Business.
Monthly patches prevent the burn of hackers.
Adobe Acrobatic Updates
Adobe patched Acrobat and Reader today. The patches fix several serious security flaws in both products. Reader got the most security fixes.
Android for August
Google released security updates for Android August 5th. Google patched a critical vulnerability that does not require user interaction. More details on the Android August updates.
Apple Security Sauce
Yes, you need your Apple security sauce!
Apple released security updates for all their products July 24th. Most of the updates relate to Apple’s Neural Engine. The Neural Engine is Apple’s processing unit used for AI, augmented reality and machine learning.
Apple patched a flaw in their Neural Engine that allowed apps “to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges”. In plain English, an app could execute nasty code with super admin rights.
This flaw affects all iThingys and Mac OS versions.
Apple also patched Watch devices and tvOS on the 24th.
More details on the Apple security sauce. 
Microsoft’s Patch Party
Microsoft patched over 80 vulnerabilities, two are listed as under active exploitation and six are listed as critical.
One of these patches doesn’t quite fix the security problem (CVE 2023-36884) but according to Microsoft it breaks the exploit chain being used. Microsoft has been less than forthcoming about some of these security flaws and their fixes recently, see Microsoft July 2023 news.
More details on Patch Tuesday updates here.
WordPress Security News
Wordfence released their mid year WordPress security report. To summarize: hackers exploit out of date WordPress plugins. With 2587 new vulnerabilities from January to July only 84 were WordPress themes, 6 were in the WordPress core while all the rest were plugins. Spend some time this month updating your WordPress plugins.
