Microsoft still has a soft spot for Windows 8.1, releases KB3175887 security update

Yesterday, Microsoft released a new security update for Windows 8.1 as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday. The update goes by the number of KB3175887 and resolves a vulnerability in Windows 8.1 that allows attackers to gain user rights.

Here’s what Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article said about update KB3175887 for Windows 8.1:

“This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views specially crafted PDF content online or opens a specially crafted PDF document. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on and has administrative user rights, an attacker could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts that have full user rights.”

To eliminate the potential risk of viewing affected content, it is highly recommended to install this update. By now, it should be available via Windows Update to all Windows 8.1 users, but you can also download and install it manually from this link.

Of course, the biggest highlight of this month’s Patch Tuesday is a new cumulative update for Windows 10 v1607, but since both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are still supported by Microsoft, the company will continue providing security updates and other smaller patches to users of these operating systems. Therefore, we should expect a similar update for Windows 8.1 come next Patch Tuesday.

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