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By Brian Livingston

When Microsoft makes a mistake, it's usually a doozy.

It's been disclosed this week that the "killbits" set by Microsoft to protect Internet Explorer against malware can be circumvented by bad guys — but we'll tell you today about emergency patches that can defend you.

We don't ordinarily publish new Windows Secrets content on the 5th Thursday of the month. I mean, come on, our writers deserve a break once in a while. To prove there's no rest for the wicked, Microsoft's release of two urgent patches this week forced us back to work. The Redmond company's out-of-cycle fixes are actually patching other patches that were released on Patch Tuesday just 16 days ago.

Like all our news updates, today's content includes only a single article — this time, it's by Susan Bradley, our esteemed Patch Watch columnist — and there's no difference between the free and paid content. All of our readers receive the same information.

Note: The next regular edition of Windows Secrets will be brought to you on Aug. 6.

Susan's detailed reporting on what to watch out for in Microsoft patches usually appears in the paid version of our newsletter. If you're not receiving her findings — and those of Fred Langa, Woody Leonhard, Ian "Gizmo" Richards, and our other contributors — you can get the word every week with no fixed fee. We accept any financial contribution of any amount, and you'll receive our paid content for a full year. For more info, free subscribers should visit our upgrade page.

Thanks for your support of our research into Microsoft Windows.

We're pulling in young energy to dig up secrets

I first learned programming some 40 years ago, and Fred, Woody, and Gizmo have had to start lying about their ages. So you might think we have nothing but "geezer geeks" here.

I'm pleased to say that we're booting up new geeks who can keep the old guys on their toes.

Stephanie Small, photo at left, joins us in the position of research director. As the person who evaluates the torrent of tips that stream in every day from our readers, she's critical to helping us develop new stories. (In fact, she's rather critical in general, but I kind of like that.)

Before she came to Windows Secrets, Stephanie was a Web intern with the monthly Seattle Metropolitan magazine, where she generated scores of capsule reviews for that publication's guide to city life.

Prior to the Met, Stephanie was a reporter for the University of Washington Daily for almost three years. She graduated from the university with a B.A. in communications/journalism in June 2009.

Stephanie has stepped into the shoes of Katy Abby, our long-time research director, who recently moved to Portland, Ore., with her husband, Jon. You used to see Katy's byline on our Wacky Web Week column, but you'll be seeing Steph's name there from now on.

Allison Espiritu (pronounced "ess PEER it too") is our new research analyst, working closely with Stephanie on a part-time basis. The rest of the week, when she's not helping us uncover fresh secrets of Windows, Allison is a reporter for the Ballard News-Tribune, a weekly Seattle neighborhood tabloid.

Before her work with WS and the Trib, Allison was a news assistant for the metro section of the Seattle Times, a daily newspaper.

Allison graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in journalism in 2007.

Damian Wadley is a Web developer who's worked with us intermittently this summer and last summer. The other three quarters of the year, he's a computer science undergraduate at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash.

I'm pleased to report that Damian has signed up to come back to work at Windows Secrets full-time when he receives his degree in May 2010. His accomplishments for us to date include recoding our Web site to make it more reliable and easier to maintain — a code base that will go live in the next week or two.

He's so good that most visitors won't notice any difference in our site — and that's a big compliment to his work. More visible design changes we're planning will be introduced over the next several months, so stay tuned.

These individuals represent the future of journalism on the Web. I assure you that they'll be digging up secrets to help Internet users long after I've enjoyed my final Blue Screen of Death.

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By Susan Bradley Two emergency updates released by Microsoft this week correct flaws in Internet Explorer and potentially dozens of third-party programs. One of the patches is intended primarily for use by application developers, but how far the threat to apps extends — and how many end users will be affected — is not yet clear.

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INTRODUCTION By Brian Livingston Special report: anti-malware killbits are broken We're pulling in young energy to dig up secrets TOP STORY By Susan Bradley Install MS's out-of-cycle patches for IE, apps Apply this Internet Explorer patch today Apps developed using ATL may be insecure

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