The Microsoft Severity Rating System is the DEFCON equivalent for your computer system. Developed by the Microsoft Security Response Centre, it assesses hostility levels of any given bug, giving you the ultimate POV in securing your system from threats.
| Microsoft Rating | Microsoft Definition | SoftwarePatch Illustration |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | A vulnerability whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action. | Critical |
| Important | A vulnerability whose exploitation could result in compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of user’s data, or of the integrity or availability of processing resources. | Important |
| Moderate | Exploitability is mitigated to a significant degree by factors such as default configuration, auditing, or difficulty of exploitation. | Moderate |
| Low | A vulnerability whose exploitation is extremely difficult, or whose impact is minimal. | Low |
The Vulnerability/ Security impact shares more details to the possible repercussions a known software bug could potentially culminate in, with the most severe being Remote Code Execution, also referred to as Arbitrary Code Execution. Remote Code Execution allows potentially malicious code, to run on your system by exploiting the bug in the process for which the patch has been released. The code that takes advantage of the known software bug is called an exploit and could potentially allow a third party to take complete control over your system.
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