As expected, Microsoft is releasing a large amount of bulletins for the October Patch Tuesday.  Typically, Microsoft follows a light month of patches with a heavy month of patches.  Although, last month's "light" patch month contained 9 new bulletins.  Microsoft announced today they will be releasing a whopping 16 new security bulletins addressing a total of 49 new vulnerabilities.  This month will be particularly challenging for administrators as most patch scenarios will hit every machine on a network.

Bulletin Detail Breakdown

  • 4 Bulletins Rated Critical
  • 10 Bulletins Rated Important
  • 2 Bulletins Rated Moderate
  • 10 Bulletins can lead to Remote Code Execution
  • 3 Bulletins can lead to Elevation of Privilege
  • 1 Bulletin can lead to Information Disclosure
  • 1 Bulletin can lead to Denial of Service
  • 1 Bulletin can lead to Tampering

Affected Products

  • All supported Microsoft Windows Operating Systems
  • Internet Explorer
  • Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 (Word, Excel)
  • Word Viewer
  • Excel Viewer
  • SharePoint Services 3.0
  • SharePoint Foundation 2010
  • SharePoint Server 2007
  • Groove Server 2010
  • Office Web Apps

If you have not addressed the out-of-band bulletin released by Microsoft last week (MS10-070) and the Adobe critical release for Flash, Reader and Acrobat, you should add these to your patch cycle this month.

More details to come Tuesday with the full bulletin detail announcement from Microsoft.

- Jason Miller