Monster Patch Tuesday breaks records

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 10 Jun 2009 at 10:38

It's going to be a busy week for IT managers, as Microsoft addresses 31 vulnerabilities in its software in a colossal Patch Tuesday update.

The bumper number of vulnerabilities is a new record for Microsoft, comfortably surpassing the 26 vulnerabilities it fixed in August of 2006 and 2008.

Among the 31 patches, 18 have been ranked critical - the most serious ranking in Microsoft's four step system. A further 11 have been classified as important, with two judged moderate.

The most significant patches comes as part of MS09-019, which patches eight separate vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. One of these plugs a hole used by a researcher at the "Pwn2Own" challenge in March, which he exploited to bag a $5,000 prize.

Other patches close vulnerabilities in Office, Windows, Windows Server and Windows Search.