Critical Microsoft and Adobe fixes to arrive on Patch Tuesday

Next Tuesday, Microsoft and Adobe will release their regular monthly patch updates. Both companies plan to close vulnerabilities that have been rated at the highest risk levels – Microsoft in Internet Explorer, and Adobe in Reader and Acrobat – but that's not all that will be patched.

In all, Microsoft intends to release a total of 10 security bulletins. Two bulletins will close critical security holes in Internet Explorer, one of which will likely be the hole in IE8 that the company has so far only closed with a temporary hotfix. The rest of the bulletins are rated as important. Of those, two security bulletins will affect all currently supported versions of Windows, while another only affects Windows 8, RT and Server 2012.

Three important patches are due to be released for versions 2003 SP3 to 2010 SP1 of Microsoft Office, and a further bulletin is scheduled for Microsoft Communicator 2007 R2 and Lync 2010 as well as 2013. Microsoft has also announced an important update for its Windows Essentials program collection.

Adobe has promised to fix one or more critical holes in Reader and in the associated Acrobat authoring tool. The update will apply to versions 9, 10(X) and 11(XI) on all supported desktop platforms. For Windows users who run the 9.x version of either program, the update has been given the highest priority. The company also plans to release a hotfix to close a 0-day hole in ColdFusion that is already actively being exploited for attacks.

(fab)