Microsoft cleans up bugs after biggest patch release

29.10.2009
After releasing its largest-ever group of security patches two weeks ago, Microsoft has done a little cleaning up.

Over the past few days, the company has re-released two security updates and issued a workaround for a Windows CryptoAPI patch that caused Microsoft's own instant-messaging server to crash.

"This is the patch month that will not die," said Susan Bradley, chief technology officer with Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun, an accountancy. She added that the Communicator issue was "a big one to miss," because Microsoft is usually careful about testing its security updates with its own products.

Scott Turner, network systems administrator with the Public Health Institute in Sacramento, California, noticed the bug immediately after installing Microsoft's updates. "We deployed the patch," he said. "When I came in the next day, nobody could connect" to Communicator.

According to a on Microsoft's Web site, the update disables several services that Communications Server needs in order to operate. The bug affects Live Communications Server 2005, Office Communications Server 2007 and evaluation versions of Office Communicator 2007.

Microsoft has released a workaround for the problem, but Turner hasn't yet been able to try it out. He's had to disable the MS09-056 update in the meantime to get his company's Communicator users up and running.