July Patch Tuesday to deliver critical Windows 7 update

Stephen Withers
Friday, 09 July 2010 07:52

Business IT - Security

Next Tuesday will see the publication of four security bulletins from Microsoft, three of them rated critical.

This month's Patch Tuesday will be a modest affair, with Microsoft issuing four bulletins. Two concern Windows, with the remaining two addressing Office issues. That's a light load for system administrators compared with the 10 bulletins issued in June.

Interestingly, the Windows issues are specific to either older or newer version of the operating system: one concerns XP and Server 2003, the other Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 (excluding Server Core installations). Both have a maximum severity rating of critical.

The Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 issue appears to the the vulnerability in the Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll) that Microsoft warned about in May, while the XP / Server 2003 matter seems to be the vulnerability in the Windows Help and Support Center function that the company warned about in June following a disclosure by a Google security researcher.

One of the Office vulnerabilities is present in Office Access 2003 SP3 and 2007 SP1 and SP2, and is regarded as critical. The other affects Outlook 2002 SP3, 2003 SP3, and 2007 SP1 and SP2.  It is rated important on all versions.

The bulletins will be released on Tuesday July 13, US time.

Microsoft continues to remind customers that this month sees the end of support for Windows 2000 and XP SP2. The company recommends that systems still running those versions should be upgraded to a supported operating system or service pack as no further security updates will be released for those old versions.