There have been a lot of patches/fixes released recently for various applications and operating systems. It’s ALWAYS important to apply these patches as soon as they become available. Why? Because someone somewhere will be trying to compromise your computer via these unpatched weaknesses. Most often, simply browsing a web site can be enough to infect your machine.
Some operating systems and applications are pretty good at automatically upgrading when patches become available. Others, not so much.
One recently released, important patch is the fix for Internet Explorer’s latest security hole. If configured correctly, your Windows PC should’ve already downloaded and installed this fix (see this article for more details on Windows Update). Other significant patch releases besides IE include:
Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Security Update 2008-008)
Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.3 or 9.0
Unfortunately, the most used applications also happen to be the most targeted for attacks. Go figure… Your best bet is to enable all your applications and operating systems to update automatically, if they have that capability.
Stay safe!
Nick