Microsoft Warns Of Serious Flaw Affecting All Windows UsersMicrosoft Warns Of Serious Flaw Affecting All Windows Users

Just before midnight Wednesday, Microsoft issued a strong security warning urging users of all Windows operating systems to apply a critical patch immediately. The company, which has been promising for years that it will strive to make its software more secure, says one of the three flaws it disclosed "could enable an attacker to gain complete control over a user's system."

All of the security flaws announced are within each version of Microsoft's Virtual Machine, up to and including the latest version, 5.0.3805. Virtual Machine is also packaged with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

All a hacker would have to do, Microsoft says in a security bulletin, is lure the user to a site designed to exploit the flaw or send the user a maliciously designed E-mail in HTML format. The first flaw lies within the way Microsoft has designed a feature to let Java applications link to databases. The second flaw is in the way Microsoft has designed a feature that enables XML to be used by Java apps, according to Microsoft.

The patch is available here.

Microsoft has also released a security bulletin about a "moderate risk" problem that could lead to unwanted disclosure of information about users of Windows 2000 and XP. That patch is available here.