Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Jeez, I go away for 3 days ...

... and Microsoft up and comes out with a bazillion security patches. Well, thirty four, anyway:

Microsoft is preparing its biggest ever Patch Tuesday update for next week.

The bumper batch of 13 bulletins collectively address 34 security flaws across a wide spectrum of Microsoft products. Eight of the baker's dozen bulletins earn the dread classification of critical, Microsoft's highest severity rating.

Security goodness for Internet Explorer, Office, and even the no-longer-anathema-to-Borepatch Internet Explorer 8. Even Windows 7 gets to come to the party; never mind that it doesn't ship until next week. I think that may be a record of sorts.*

And it's this week now. So if you run Windows, you'll want to download them now.

* The first security patch for Windows 7 is released before Windows 7. That's not surprising, because Windows 7 has been ready to ship for months. Microsoft deserves some credit for taking security seriously here, and there's a good chance that new Windows 7 computers will automatically check for the update and download it. So well done, Microsoft.

UPDATE 13 October 2009 13:39: Just to clarify, all Windows versions have the update, not just Windows 7.

7 comments:

  1. Fortunately I don't have to download the Windows-7 patch while still running XP Pro, do I? :-)

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  2. Dirtcrashr, you don't need the Windows 7 patch. You do need the XP patch.

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  3. Thanks once again. Sure enough, this afternoon Winders update had a ton o' updates ready to be downloaded. Which I did.

    Are you saying I should upgrade to IE 8? I mean, is it worth the effort since I run Firefox?

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  4. Nice tip! Thanks. I wanted to leave early today, and thanks to your post, I triggered the download much, much, much earlier than I normally would. It finished about 5 minutes before I needed to leave. You saved me a good 15 minutes today, which I will totally burn up reading your site.

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  5. I think I've got all my XP patches now.

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