Mega Patch Gift from Microsoft Next Week

You are here: News > News > Mega Patch Gift from Microsoft Next Week

» IT Security NEWS

» 06 June 2009

Two days ago, Microsoft released a statement publicizing that by next week, it will send out a total of ten security updates to fix critical bugs, glitches, code flaws, and other vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel, Windows, Word, Office, and Internet Explorer (IE).

If the software giant is able to go fulfill its promised update (for it has infrequently cancelled an update or two without prior notice before), this month's Patch Tuesday will feature the largest, heftiest upgrade since last October's Patch Tuesday.

According to Andrew Storms, the nCircle Network Security's director of security operations, Microsoft has finally returned to providing a "normal load" of updates for the Patch Tuesday service. He says that although there are those who believe that this upcoming delivery is a lot bigger than usual, those who have been regular patrons of the monthly ritual knows otherwise. In contrast, Microsoft's Patch Tuesday for April featured only one security update, which is a 14-patch PowerPoint fix.

The 10 updates that Microsoft's monthly advance notification announced last Thursday will contain one patch each for IE, Word, Excel, and Office, as well as a whopping six updates total for the Windows operating system.

Six of the ten fixes were scored as "critical", which is Microsoft's highest vulnerability level, while one was labeled as "important" and three were deemed as "moderate". Incidentally, the six critical patches cover all five applications, which are Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, IE, and Windows.

Storms pointed out that the most important "red flag" update is going to be for IE, because it's judged as a critical threat, all versions of Windows feature the bug, and it's still at a critical level even for IE 7 and 8 for Vista. The June 9 update will provide the first-ever production patches for the March-released IE 8, the safest and most protection-mindful browser Microsoft has ever had to date.

Microsoft will also release fixes for PowerPoint's Macintosh edition. The fixes for the Mac will also be prepared for deployment on Tuesday. This is a definite improvement to the lack of Mac patches on last month's update, even though Microsoft was able to provide patches for all Windows versions of the program. The reason for this is because the company has to wait for Apple's own patches before it could publish a Mac update.

Click Here For Web Shop

Reviews of SecPoint.com