Microsoft will have a big Patch Tuesday

SOFTWARE BEHEMOTH MICROSOFT is prepared to plug holes its products on this month's Patch Tuesday next week.

Twice the size of previous odd-numbered month stitch jobs, the Patch Tuesday plugs include four that are labeled Critical for Windows and Office. That's the most severe ranking of Microsoft's security threat levels and applies to remote code execution vulnerabilities.

These critical high risk vulnerabilities apply specifically to both Windows and Office. In Microsoft's own words: "A vulnerability whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action."

The Vole is rolling out a grand total of nine patches for Tuesday September 14 next week. Five of the nine patches are listed as Important and Microsoft is going to fix 11 remote code execution vulnerabilities in total.

Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3, Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 , Outlook 2003 Service Pack 3 and Outlook 2007 Service Pack 2 all get Important patch updates. However, Outlook 2002 Service Pack 3 is on the Critical patch list.

All versions of Windows XP will get a Critical patch, even Service Pack 3. Windows Vista also has vulnerbilities with the highest aggregate severity rating to be patched and Windows Server 2003 doesn't fair too much better.

There are also some patches for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems that are listed as Important. There are no Critical patches listed for those products.

Microsoft is going to host a webcast the day after it has issued the patches. To see that, you can register for it here. µ