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Microsoft saves the world with the ANI patch

Anytime Microsoft races to push out an ultra critical patch out of their usual Black Tuesday monthly cycle, it usually means something pretty bad is happening. Such was the case today when the kind folks in Redmond saw it fit to fix a dangerous vulnerability in animated cursor handling that was being exploited to unleash numerous attacks. You can check out some video of the exploit here.

Microsoft was actually pretty quick in its turnaround of the patch, so some credit is due here. But baby Vista already has a chink in its armor with the new flaw.

Anyway, we're hearing a lot how the ANI attacks ruined security professionals' weekends as they had to come into to work early to perform damage control. What about us journalists? Besides having to file over the weekend, our inboxes have been bombarded with researchers' opinions and PR reps' solicitations for interviews.

I'm so involved with this story now that I found myself actually excited when the Windows update exclamation point popped up on my work PC screen this afternoon, signaling the patch was ready to go.

Damn you Microsoft for making me giddy over a security fix.

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