MS planning Patch Tuesday whopper: 16 bulletins, 49 vulnerabilities

Ryan Naraine - This month’s batch of security patches from Microsoft will be a record-breaking one: 16 bulletins addressing a whopping 49 security vulnerabilities.

According to the company’s advance notice, four of the 16 bulletins will be rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. Microsoft rates a critical vulnerability as one that could be exploited to propagate an Internet worm without user action.

The 49 vulnerabilities will mark the largest ever batch of patches issued by Microsoft. The previous record was 34 vulnerabilities patched in August this year.

The October patch batch will include fixes for security flaws in the Windows operating system, the Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft Office and the .NET Framework.

It is very likely that Microsoft will include patches for a pair of elevation of privilege vulnerabilities that were exploited during the mysterious Stuxnet worm attack.

via MS planning Patch Tuesday whopper: 16 bulletins, 49 vulnerabilities | ZDNet.