Microsoft's Patch Tuesday to hit users big and hard

Stephen Withers
Friday, 08 August 2008 02:59

Your IT - Home IT

Patch Tuesday falls relatively late in the month of August 2008, and Microsoft has a bumper bundle of bulletins up its corporate sleeve, with no less than seven - count 'em, folks, that's seven - critical items. The flaws to be patched are spread across Microsoft's most widely used products.

Each of the seven issues has the potential to allow remote code execution. The affected products are Windows, Internet Explorer, Media Player, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Office generally.

Quite a list, and one that covers most of the software used on many computers.

Throw in the bulletins that are rated important and the coverage is even more complete, as it adds Outlook Express/Windows Mail, Messenger, and Word, to the list of affected software.

There will be something for everyone next Tuesday, as there will two or more critical updates for every supported version of Windows. The only exception is Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 for x86 and x64 systems, which are only affected by important updates.

The situation is more mixed regarding Office and related applications.

Office 2000, XP and 2003 all have at least one critical patch. Bulletins covering Office 2004, 2007 and 2008 have a maximum severity of important.

There is a critical update for Snapshot Viewer for Access.

That's the critical stuff taken care of, but please read on for items affected by this month's important bulletins.