// Home / Enterprise / News

Microsoft warns of Patch Tuesday from hell

By Barry Collins

Posted on 9 Oct 2009 at 09:13

Microsoft will deliver no fewer than 13 security bulletins on October's Patch Tuesday.

The bumper security update includes eight critical issues, and five that are classed as important. Windows 7 RTM also makes an appearance in the Patch Tuesday line-up for the first time.

The 13 bulletins address a total of 34 vulnerabilities, most of which are related to remote code execution. There are also fixes to counter denial-of-service attacks, elevation of privileges and spoofing.

The affected software includes every version of Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, SQL Server and more. Just to add to the IT department headaches, all of them will likely require a restart of the patched PC.

Even though it isn't officially launched yet, Windows 7 is affected by five of the bulletins, although only one of those is critical. The final RTM version of Windows 7 has been available for download to MSDN/TechNet subscribers and businesses for a few weeks now, even though consumers won't get their hands on the software until 22 October.

More than 700,000 people in the UK are also running the Windows 7 beta.

Internet Explorer 8 is also affected by one of the critical bugs.

The patch onslaught means it's likely to be a busy time for IT departments, many of which will want to test the updates before rolling them out across the company.

Superstitious readers will have noted the 13 patches will arrive on 13 October. Read the Microsoft Security Bulletin for full details.

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

User comments

Party packs

...they have they're versions...how will they be able to cope with the onslaught of patches?

By sbeams on 9 Oct 2009

Errm.

*&** their **&*

By sbeams on 9 Oct 2009

Its a pity we can't edit our comments so as to avoid making such possibly embarrassing typos - what is that little blue arrow for at the end of every comment? (it should be 'edit'!)

By nicomo on 9 Oct 2009

or post reply, or quote, or something useful at least then I wouldn't find myself clicking ten times every time I want to reply to a certain post. even though I know it does nothing...

By SimonCorlett on 9 Oct 2009

Just read that last post back, and should have checked my grammar before posting!

By SimonCorlett on 9 Oct 2009

blue arrow

Actually, come to think of it - that is a good question

Just why is it there?

By greemble on 9 Oct 2009

Blue arrow

Isn't it inteded simply as an "end-of-post" marker - the cyberspace equivalent of the old DOS EOF character?!

By JohnGray7581 on 9 Oct 2009

what blue arrow?

can't see one here

By jonathandk2 on 9 Oct 2009

what blue arrow?

can't see one here

By jonathandk2 on 9 Oct 2009

found it

found it, but only in IE. I was using Firefox before. I also have no idea why it was posted twice.

By jonathandk2 on 9 Oct 2009

Vista space

Oh joy another 500 meg used to install the patches. Even after ccleaner. 18 gig for an OS is mad and just shows how poor on resources Vista is. About time they had a proper tool to clean up the WINSXS folder. How aptly named it is eXceSs! 9 gig in that folder alone 46K files....

By andycollinson1 on 14 Oct 2009

Leave a comment

You need to Login or Register to comment.