Microsoft solves a 17-Year old Bug Issue

A Windows bug that was there in the operating system for the last 17 years is going to be fixed in the next update for security that Windows is going to provide. This bug was there from a very long time and it has been there from the times of DOS and first appearing in the Windows NT 3.1 version. Along with this vulnerability, Windows is aiming to fix 25 other major bugs, which has been bothering this operating system for a long time as well. In January 2010, a Google researcher named Tavis Ormandy, who specializes in security, found this bug, which is related to a particular utility of Windows, allows old programs to run on newer versions of Windows.

He tried to exploit all major versions of Windows starting from Windows server 2003 to Windows 7, going through XP and server 2008 versions of Windows as well to find that he was successful in manipulating that particular utility. This particular patch, which will be available in the February update and will ensure that along with five other bugs are also fixed which previously allowed hackers to run their own applications on the Windows platform.

Along with fixing bugs in the operating system, this update will ensure some other fixes in Office 2003, Office 2004 that is meant for the Apple Macintosh machine and Office XP as well. However, this was not one of the biggest bug fix updates, which Microsoft has released until date and the biggest update that was released was the one on October 2009. That particular patch handled 34 bugs and out of them, eight were considered to be of high priority. Another important patch that Microsoft released in January 2010 was able to fix a major defect in the Internet Explorer itself. This fix was important since it is believed that the cyber attack on Google in China was done through this particular bug that was there in the explorer.