A Fat Patch Tuesday

This past Tuesday (2/10/200) Microsoft released some critical patches for “Patch Tuesday” for all Windows users.   Did you get it?

What is Patch Tuesday you ask?  It’s nothing like Fat Tuesday, that’s for sure.   Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of each month, the day on which Microsoft releases security patches.  Who knew? 

Like a Fat Tuesday party, the February Patch Tuesday was a big one that you probably don’t want to miss.   This is especially true if you use Internet Explorer 7 (IE7).  Which begs the question, why are you using IE7 anyway?  Read my blog post about browser safety at http://biologyoftechnology.com/?p=4, but I digress. 

Microsoft declared many of this month’s patches as critical for IE7 running on Windows XP and Windows Vista.  This patch fixes IE7 holes that allow an attacker to break into systems that visit websites with specific malware land mines.  So if you use IE7 and you don’t want an attacker to penetrate your PC, you need this patch.

To make sure you have this update, go to the Microsoft update website at the following link and follow the prompts.
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

If you are up for some real “exciting” bedtime reading about Patch Tuesday, you can read more than you want to know about this “techie” holy day at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday

By the way, the real Fat Tuesday this year is February 24, 2009.

See you there!