Microsoft Announces Four "Critical" Patches for Next Week

In addition to releasing an array of fancy new consumer electronics, Microsoft has announced that next week will see the company release updates targeted at four vulnerabilities with Windows.

All four are vulnerabilities are branded critical, and if exploited allow for remote code execution. While it may look like the number of updates is relatively small because affected programs are listed as Windows Media Player, Microsoft Encoder and Microsoft Office, it’s the fourth bulletin that just claims to affect Windows that has us worried.

According to ChannelWeb the fix will address bugs in Internet Explorer, several OS errors with both XP and Vista and problems in Microsoft .Net Framework, Microsoft Office, Digital Image Suite, Visual Studio, Visual Fox Pro, Forefront Client Security, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

Following last month’s barrage of updates, the four for September seem like a drop in the ocean, however according to a report in ComputerWorld, researcher Andrew Storm says users shouldn’t expect to have an easy time with the September 9 security bulletin. Despite the fact that last month’s update contained 11 bulletins, six of them critical, the September update could be “massive.” Storm is especially interested in that the ‘Windows’ label is used as a blanket term for all programs affected in bulletin three, thinking it could be special case rather than Microsoft changing the way they inform users about critical vulnerabilities and updates.

Read the full story on ComputerWorld.