Microsoft Plans 4 Security Bulletins for Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has announced plans to release four security bulletins next week for its September Patch Tuesday to address vulnerabilities across a number of products, including Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office.

In an advisory released Sept. 4, Microsoft officials stated they would release fixes for the flaws Sept. 9. All four bulletins are rated "critical," the highest rating Microsoft gives. The patches focus on remote code execution vulnerabilities in Windows Media Player 11, Windows Media Encoder 9, Microsoft Office and numerous components of the Windows operating system.

More information is available in Microsoft's advisory.

Though this is one of the quieter Patch Tuesdays of the year in terms of the number of bulletins—in August there were 11—the Windows bulletin involves a laundry list of products, including versions of Microsoft Visual FoxPro, the .NET Framework, SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio.

Come October, Microsoft is slated to launch a new program tipping software security vendors off to Microsoft's monthly updates. The effort Microsoft Active Protections Program is meant to give security vendors a head start against hackers. Under the program, Microsoft officials have said they plan to release information such as what conditions have to be present for exploitation and how the vulnerability can be identified.