Best Practices for Mitigating RPC and DCOM Vulnerabilities
This white paper is being made available to assist system administrators and technical personnel in preventing damage caused by an exploit for vulnerabilities in the RPC and DCOM sub-systems in Microsoft’s operating systems. Several such vulnerabilities have been announced in Microsoft security bulletins MS03-026 and MS03-039. The vulnerabilities affect most currently supported Microsoft operating systems. However, this paper is primarily geared to technical personnel supporting organizational networks. Consumers are encouraged to go to www.microsoft.com/protect to get information on the three steps they can follow to help protect themselves from this and other threats. Source: Microsoft.com

Windows 2000 SP4 released
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) provides the latest updates to the Windows 2000 operating systems. This service pack includes 669 public fixes and 6 partner only fixes in the following areas: security, application compatibility, operating system reliability, and setup. Windows 2000 SP4 is a recommended update that includes the updates contained in previous Windows 2000 service packs. To determine whether to install Windows 2000 SP4, Microsoft recommends that you review the Windows 2000 SP4 documentation. (June 26, 2003)

Microsoft patch freezes some systems
The software giant says some customers who applied quick fixes in late 2001 and early 2002 may have problems with a recently released update. Source: CNET (March 20, 2003)

Microsoft patch for latest flaw causing problems
Microsoft's patch for the latest vulnerability in its products, a critical flaw in Windows 2000, does not appear to do the job it is supposed to do - patch the hole. Source: theage.com.au (March 19, 2003)

IE Cumulative Update Is Messy
Microsoft has released an updated cumulative IE rollup; if you distributed the original February 5 rollup, you might need to apply two additional hotfixes - one to correct the IE 6.0 authentication problem and one to restore HTML-based Help functionality in the browser.. Source: Windows & .NET Magazine

Post-SP3 FRS Update Polishes Performance; and First 2003 Security Hotfix
Microsoft releases a post-Win2K SP3 FRS tune-up that addresses several inefficiencies in the original replication model, and the company issues the first security hotfix of 2003 to eliminate a buffer overflow condition. Source: Windows & .NET Magazine (Feb 5, 2003)