Prepare To Patch

If you are a Microsoft Windows user, chances are there's a patch waiting for you tomorrow.Microsoft has told its customers that nine security bulletins will be published on so-called "Patch Tuesday" and every currently supported version of Windows will be updated.

In its advance notice for this month, Microsoft said that five of the nine bulletins will be ranked "critical." Affected software will include, in addition to operating systems, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server and the .Net Framework.

A reading of the advance security bulletin shows that Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft ISA Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server -- as well as many versions of Windows -- as susceptible to remote code execution attacks. That means this issues will need to be patched ASAP.

This busy patch month follows a rather busy July, when Microsoft issued emergency patches a couple of weeks after July's scheduled patch release date. Those patches addressed critical software vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL). Flaws that would enable remote attacks on unpatched systems.

For a mobile experience, consider following my security and technology observations on Twitter.