Patch Tuesday May 2022: all the software security news you need for your small business.
Patch Tuesday May 2022
Yes, it’s that marvelous day when most software vendors release their security updates Patch Tuesday. It’s always the second day of the month. Sometimes vendors release emergency patches on another day, those are known as out-of-band patch and usually are critical. An ounce of patching is cheaper than a pound of hacking.
Adobe Updates
Adobe released updates for some of its software yesterday but the usual offenders Acrobat, Reader, Creative Cloud and the design gang of four were not updated.
I did get a call from yet another client who was having problems with Adobe Acrobat. While they had updated Acrobat to the latest version, Creative Cloud was not updated and it was causing the problems. Remember that Adobe wedded Acrobat to the Creative Cloud software (there is no way to remove it on Windows) and you have to update BOTH for Adobe to work reliably.
Bad Apple
Still no updates from Apple for any of their products. The last update Apple released was way back March 31st for OS Monterey, Watch and all the iThingys.
This is very unusual. It’s the first time in over two years Apple has not released any patches or security updates in over a month.
Watch carefully for Apple updates in the next few weeks. You can check the Apple Security Bulletin.
Update May 17th: Apple released updates for all of its products.
Microsoft Spools Security
Microsoft spooled over 74 security problems in their products Tuesday May 10th. Yet again the Print Spooler is blotting Windows Security. Another regular update blotch is Remote Desktop and the PTP tunnel protocol, both of these used in remote access. Servers received several critical updates. In total Microsoft patched seven “critical” flaws.
Microsoft also patched a problem they rated as “low” with .NET . The .NET suite is used in databases and applications. The security flaw will cause those applications to crash. If you rely on an application that is affected and keeps crashing this is hardly a “low” priority patch.
There were two important Office patches. Excel as usual is on the list. The other is a login security problem. Remember that Office updates in the background without warning and often disrupts work.
More details on all the Microsoft Patch Tuesday excitement here.
Remember to schedule some time this week to patch all your devices.
