Patch Tuesday looms, but no Windows patches in sight!

Stephen Withers
Friday, 05 November 2010 07:44

Business IT - Security

We're nearly a week into the month, so it's time to find out what Patch Tuesday will bring. Unusually, Microsoft's listing no updates for any version of Windows, but there is an important patch for the recently released Office 2011 for Mac.

Microsoft has given advance notice of just three security bulletins scheduled for release next Tuesday (US time). Remarkably, none concern Windows. The last time that happened was May 2009.

However, this does suggest that the recently discovered vulnerability in Internet Explorer will go unpatched for at least another month.

Two of the November bulletins cover Microsoft Office. The first is rated critical on Office 2007 and 2010, but only important on Office XP, 2003, and the recently-released 2011 for Mac.

The second Office bulletin is specific to PowerPoint, and is rated important on PowerPoint 2002, 2003 and the PowerPoint Viewer. No other currently supported versions are affected.

The only other bulletin concerns the Forefront Unified Access Gateway, and is rated important on all currently supported versions.

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