Clear next Tues: Incoming Outlook, IE, Windows critical security patches • The Register

Clear next Tues: Incoming Outlook, IE, Windows critical security patches • The Register: Microsoft will squash 14 sets of security vulnerabilities – four of which are deemed critical – in the next edition of its monthly batch of Patch Tuesday updates, due next week.

Those four critical patches will address flaws in the Sharepoint server software, the Outlook component of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010, Internet Explorer (versions 6, 7 and 8) and older versions of Windows (XP and Server 2003). All four critical bugs, plus four “important” ones, allow attackers to remotely execute code on a vulnerable system.

In fact, besides those four critical holes, all the remaining 10 so-called bulletins are rated “important”. Redmond is holding off details on the vulnerabilities pending the delivery of fixes this coming Tuesday, so for now we only know which software packages are due to be fixed without knowing why they need updating.

Ziv Mador, director of security research at infosec firm Trustwave, said: “This month Microsoft continues the recent tradition of large Patch Tuesday with fourteen bulletins this month. No less than eight of them are categorised as remote code execution but only four of them are rated as critical.”