According to Microsoft, tomorrow's batch will be the most 'generous' in its history with no less than 16 security updates designed to address a total of 49 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, MS-Office and the software giant's .NET Framework.
Infosecurity understands that the batch of updates will include a raft of Windows 7 critical updates, as well as updates for Internet Explorer 8.x. There are also said to be a raft of updates for MS -Office 2010, for which the free beta test – started late last year for early testers of the then new Office suite – is expected to cease functioning later this month.
Commenting on the size and complexity of tomorrow's Patch Tuesday updates, Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer of cloud security specialist Qualys, said that four of bulletins have a rating of 'critical' and affect all versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and 2008R2.
"One of the critical updates is for Internet Explorer, applicable to version 6, 7 and 8", he said, adding that MS-Office is affected by two bulletins, one for MS-Word and the other for MS-Excel on all platforms including Apple Mac OS X.
"Each vulnerability is rated with a severity of `Important', which is Microsoft's standard rating for file format vulnerabilities, as they require user interaction to be triggered", he said.
"For the first time the new Microsoft Word 2010 is included in an advisory", he added.