Administrivia #35856 - Revised MS Security Bulletin Notification to NTBugtraq

From: Russ (Russ.Cooper@RC.ON.CA)
Date: 03/20/02 

Date:         Wed, 20 Mar 2002 08:06:20 -0500
From: Russ <Russ.Cooper@RC.ON.CA>
To: NTBUGTRAQ@LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM

I just wanted to let you know that I've revised the automation of
informing NTBugtraq about Microsoft Security Bulletins.

Until now, bulletin advisories were automatically sent any time a new
bulletin was put up, or, when a bulletin was revised.

Some of you may have noticed that you were getting the same advisory
more than once. The reason was the program I wrote was recognizing that
the bulletin had been revised by Microsoft, but it didn't make any
mention of that in the advisory sent to the list.

I've now modified the way this works so that new bulletins get "Alert:"
at the beginning of the subject line, and revised bulletins get
"Revised:" instead.

Also, revision advisories will now start with the revision list at the
beginning of the message body to give you a brief idea of the reason for
the revision. The bulletin web page does not provide as much information
about the reason for a revision as the actual Microsoft mailing list
message does, but at least you'll be able to quickly see whether or not
a patch has been altered versus just clarifying some points on the
bulletin web page (which is more often than not the reason for a revised
bulletin).

Also, I used to only check for revised bulletins once a day, I now check
for revised bulletins from 2002 every time I check for new bulletins.
Bulletin checks occur every 5 minutes. Bulletins from previous years are
still checked for revisions once a day.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to put in a plug for Dave Wanta
and his www.KBAlertz.com site. Dave's got a system set up that monitors
Microsoft's KnowledgeBase and reports on new articles. His website
allows you to select from 260 different categories of articles. If
anything new comes along in your selected categories, he emails you.
Check it out.

Cheers,
Russ - NTBugtraq Editor

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