RE: Anyone have hard evidence of problems with Windows Automatic Updates?

From: James D. Stallard <james(at)leafgrove.com>
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 11:22:17 EST

Thomas

I think you only have to look back at the debacle that was Windows NT4 SP6.
Microsoft released it over a year late, it was a Seriously Bad Thing
(tm) and was pulled and re-released a short while later as SP6a

In all fairness to Microsoft, they pretty much halted all development work for several months last year to engage in the "Trustworthy Computing Initiative" so perhaps the bad old days is a bad example.

There is probably something in the archives about SP6/SP6a, if not I have plenty of archives from NTBugtraq that covered the subject in detail, which I would be happy to post somewhere public.

Regards

James D. Stallard

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Cameron [mailto:ThomasC@mip.com] Sent: 20 March 2003 20:49
To: focus-ms@securityfocus.com
Subject: Anyone have hard evidence of problems with Windows Automatic Updates?

All -

We are using the Windows 2000 automatic update feature on several of our production servers.

One of my fellow IT team members has expressed concern that Microsoft has a bad history of releasing hotfixes which break servers. I can find lots of anecdotal evidence that this has happened, but only a very limited number of cases where some specific configurations were negatively impacted by hotfix application.

Does anyone have any hard evidence that automatic updates are a Bad Thing(tm)?

Thanks,
Thomas Cameron, RHCE, CNE, MCSE, MCT
Best Software - Non Profit and Government Division
(512) 454-1844 x 307

For the protection of our internal systems and those of our customers, Best Software, Inc., blocks most email attachments. Please use plain text when corresponding via email with Best Software.

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ALERT: How a Hacker Uses SQL Injection to Steal Your SQL Data! It's as simple as placing additional SQL commands into a Web Form input box giving hackers complete access to all your backend systems! http://www.spidynamics.com/mktg/sqlinjection33 Received on Fri Mar 21 16:01:19 2003