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"This is a mammoth Patch Tuesday, and we have not seen anything of this scale in a long time," says Karthik Raman, a McAfee researcher.

The six critical patches have been given the software vendor's highest security rating because the vulnerabilities could allow attackers to take complete control

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remotely over a computer running the vulnerable software.

"Many of the vulnerabilities addressed by the fixes could be exploited if a Windows user simply views a malformed image or visits a malicious website, a favourite attack method among cybercriminals," says Raman.

The majority of the vulnerabilities addressed by the August security bulletin can be exploited through malicious websites or by tricking a computer user into opening a rigged image or Office file.

And two of these - MS08-041 and MS08-042 - cover vulnerabilities that had already been publicly disclosed and are actively being used in cyberattacks.

McAfee recommended organisations prioritise the updates that fix the image processing flaws (MS08-044) and the Internet Explorer update (MS08-045), because it claims attackers are more likely to take advantage of these vulnerabilities in new attacks.