The patches that Microsoft released for a security flaw are partly to blame for the recent Zotob virus outbreak. As noted in many places, among them being This Week in Tech, hackers reverse engineered the patches to determine exactly where the security flaw was and released the Zotob virus within *THREE DAYS*.
Microsoft is damned if they don’t release security patches, because then if the flaw is discovered later by independent third parties and evidence comes out that Microsoft knew about it, itd be a Plaintiff lawyer’s field day.
At the same time, they are damned if they do. Three days is not enough time for many large companies to roll out security patches since the patches need to be tested carefully. If the patch breaks word processing applications for an entire international company, heads will roll in the IT department. Yet if hackers release another virus like Zotob but which is more troublesome, IT departments will be forced to roll out patches much sooner than they want to.
Microsoft, as the source of the patch, is damned either way.