Important security updates

Take a moment to get these because they're pretty important:

Adobe and Microsoft today each issued software updates to fix critical security issues in their products. Microsoft released eight patch bundles to address 26 different vulnerabilities in Windows and other software – including not just one but two zero-day bugs in Internet Explorer. Adobe’s patches fix a single critical vulnerability present in both Adobe Acrobat and Reader.

Four of the eight patch bulletins from Microsoft earned its most dire “critical” rating, meaning the updates fix problems deemed so severe that miscreants or malware could use them to break into vulnerable systems without any help from users.

The easiest way to make sure that you have the Microsoft fixes is Windows Update.  You'll want to use Internet Explorer to visit this page because Windows Update will more or less automatically start up that way.  Simples.

The Adobe fix is available here.  If you read PDFs, you'll want this.  Bad guys can embed attacks in a PDF that would attack you while you read a document.  It's a handy way for them to serve up poisoned bait to you.