Why it matters to you
Patch Tuesday may have been delayed for a month, but Windows still released a security update for Flash that users will want to take advantage of.
Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, which is when the company issues its security and bug fix updates for Windows machines, has historically been the second Tuesday of the month. That’s slowly changing with Windows 10, but for now, Patch Tuesday remains pretty entrenched.
That’s why Microsoft’s decision to skip February 2017’s Patch Tuesday and delay its updates for an entire month was particularly striking. It’s definitely an unusual occurrence, but it now appears that the company isn’t completely withholding all Windows updates, as Betanews reports.
More: Stop refreshing Windows Update! Microsoft’s February 2017 Patch Tuesday is canceled
Starting Tuesday, Microsoft is going to release some security updates aimed at patching some issues with Adobe Flash Player. The information comes from an email that the company sent to its largest enterprise customers, which read:
“Microsoft is planning to release security updates for Adobe Flash Player. These updates will be offered to the following operating systems: Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016. No other security updates are scheduled for release until the next scheduled monthly update release on March 14, 2017.”
It’s unknown precisely what Microsoft is fixing in the Flash updates, or why it chose to release these bug fixes and not some of the others included in the February 2017 Patch Tuesday package. At least one issue, an SMB crashing bug, was considered a priority by many users, and an unresolved security problem was recently publicized by Google as part of its Project Zero, which publishes zero-day bugs 90 days after Google lets a developer know the bug exists.
Don’t be surprised, then, if you check for updates on your Windows machine and find one waiting for you. You’ll still be waiting until March for the complete Patch Tuesday fix, but in the meantime, you should go ahead and run the update to make sure that your Adobe Flash Player software is secure.