Microsoft prepares for a record Patch Tuesday

Stephen Withers
Friday, 06 August 2010 08:28

Business IT - Security

Microsoft has provided its customary advance notice of security bulletins, and it looks like August's Patch Tuesday is going to be a big one with a record 14 bulletins.

14 bulletins is the most Microsoft has ever released at a time - the previous record was 13. Not only are there a relatively large number of bulletins, they are wide ranging and serious.

Eight of the 14 bulletins are rated critical, and the remaining six are important. In all, 34 vulnerabilities will be addressed by next week's patches.

Windows accounts for 12 of the bulletins, seven of them critical and five important. They affect XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003, and Server 2008.

The effects of changes to Microsoft's security practices over the years can be seen when so many bulletins are released at once. Where the ratings for XP are seven critical and three important, that's almost reversed for Windows 7 with four critical, five important and one moderate.

One of those bulletins is rated critical for all platforms, and concerns Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8. Microsoft has also identified SQL as an affected subsystem, and one of the critical Windows bulletins also affects Silverlight.

Turning to Office, there will be one critical bulletin and one important. The affected software is Word 2002, 2003 and 2007; Excel 2002 and 2003; and Office 2004 and 2008. Also affected are Works 9; Word Viewer; the Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats; and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac.