Five Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Of August 22

Microsoft dealt with a faulty patch as well as a cloud outage, while VMware unintentionally publicized the fact that some people call its public cloud "vCheese." On the security front, Community Health Systems and UPS got hit with security breaches, while Oracle was sued by Oregon for its work on the state's Obamacare website.

Microsoft Releases Faulty Patch, Azure Cloud Service Suffers Outage

Microsoft pulled back a patch for Windows 8.1 issued as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday release after some users experienced technical difficulties. The troubled update -- called MS14-045 -- was aimed at fixing three vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel, one of which cybercriminals could use to gain privileges to attack other machines.

Microsoft Azure, the software giant's public cloud, also went dark for some users for as long as five hours. All in all, this was a week Microsoft would probably like to forget.

VMware Tries To Distance Itself From 'Cheesy' Nickname

VMware is sick of people referring to its vCloud Hybrid Service public cloud by its abbreviation, "vCheese," and this week the vendor took action to quash the unfortunate nickname.

VMware rebranded vCHS as vCloud Air, but some partners aren't crazy about that name either. Then there's the possibility that some people might give it the nickname "vChair". It's also possible lawyers from Apple and Adobe may scrutinize VMware's choice of name for potential trademark infringement.

Community Health Systems Hit With Heartbleed Bug

Online miscreants exploited the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug in a Juniper Networks device to gain access to data about some 4.5 million patients of Community Health Systems.

Community Health Systems said the attack, which originated in China, employed sophisticated malware to gain access to its network in separate incidents in April and June. The attackers were able to access patient names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and, in some cases, telephone numbers and the names of employers or guarantors, the company said.

UPS Discloses Credit Card Breach At 51 Retail Locations

UPS Store became the latest retailer to suffer a credit card breach after investigators found malware that exposed sensitive customer and credit card data at 51 retail locations in 24 states.

Customer names, postal addresses, email addresses and payment card information may have been exposed between Jan. 20 and Aug. 11, UPS Store said.

"Not all of this information may have been exposed for each customer," said UPS Store CEO Tim Davis in a statement. "As part of our response to this incident, we have implemented various system enhancements and antivirus updates."

Oracle Gets Sued By State Of Oregon Over Glitch-Ridden Obamacare Website

The Oregon Department of Justice sued Oracle this week for alleged poor handling of its work in developing the Cover Oregon health exchange website, the Oregonian newspaper reported this week.

Oracle stands accused of fraud, false claims, breach of contract and civil racketeering, according to the report.