Microsoft is planning a bumper Patch Tuesday next week, with the company rolling out 13 bulletins addressing 26 vulnerabilities.
Of those 13 bulletins, five have been rated critical – Microsoft’s highest security alert – due to the risk of remote code execution. A further seven are pegged as important, the next rating down, and one has been classed as moderate.
According to Microsoft’s advanced security bulletin, 11 of the updates will affect various versions of Windows – from XP to 7 – while the remaining two are aimed at exploits in Office XP and Office 2003 on Windows, and Office 2004 for Mac.
The exact details of the fixes will be kept secret until Tuesday in order to cut down the chances of exploits, however, it’s almost certain Microsoft will patch a recently discovered 17-year-old bug in the kernel of all 32-bit versions of Windows that could be used to hijack PCs.
Microsoft issued an advisory on the bug last week, after it was flagged by a Google researcher.
While the number of updates is sure to prove a headache for IT managers, it could have been worse. Only two weeks ago, Microsoft was forced to release an out-of-band update for Internet Explorer to address the flaw used by Chinese hackers to attack Google’s servers.
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