News

Nine Security Fixes Coming on Patch Tuesday

• By Scott Bekker
• October 07, 2005

Get ready for a huge Microsoft Patch Tuesday next week. The Microsoft Security Response Center is preparing nine security bulletins, according to its Thursday night advance notification e-mail.

It's not clear from the wording of the notification how many of the bulletins will address critical issues. Microsoft lumped the bulletins into two groups -- eight bulletins affecting Windows and one bulletin affecting both Windows and Microsoft Exchange. Of the eight Windows bulletins, the notification e-mail says, "The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical." The Windows-Exchange vulnerability has a maximum severity rating of "important."

Due to problems found in testing or other issues, the MSRC sometimes releases a different number of bulletins on Patch Tuesday than it anticipates in the notification that goes out the previous Thursday.

The busy Tuesday coming next week follows a familiar boom-and-bust cycle the MSRC has displayed since it moved to a once-a-month patch process. Last month there were no security patches from Microsoft after the MSRC decided at the last minute to cancel release of a critical Windows security patch due to a quality problem.

Microsoft customers will also see an update of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Tuesday. There will be no non-security high-priority updates next week on Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services or Software Update Services.