Topic: MS culls Patch Tuesday litter

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By John Leyden
The Register

Microsoft has scaled back the number of patches it plans to release on Tuesday as part of its regular monthly security updates cycle. Instead of releasing eight patches (as previously planned) Redmond will only release four.

These patches will include a critical update for Windows and three involving Office, at least one of which is critical, according to Microsoft's revised advanced notice statement. It remains to be seen whether these fixes will resolve a trio of Word flaws, which have been left flapping since early December.

Microsoft's Security Response blog states that the software giant will be releasing only half the number of expected fixes without providing much of an explanation. In the past, Microsoft's decision to release a batch of fixes all at once has caused problems so perhaps its security gnomes have decided to concentrate on the most serious fixes first. Alternatively testing glitches might be behind a decision to delay some of the patches.

Either way we'll find out whether or not users have to wait for those important Word fixes by late Tuesday. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/ms_trims_patch_tuesday/

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IE, Outlook, Excel flaws patched

Microsoft has issued patched to fix vulnerabilities in three of its software applications.

Four security patches were released in all, three of which were rated 'critical'.

Vulnerabilities in email application Outlook, spreadsheet software Excel and browser Internet Explorer have all been fixed. A further patch was released to mend a flaw in the Windows operating system, though this vulnerability wasn't rated as important.

The Internet Explorer flaw affects several versions of the browser including IE7, released late last year. So far, IE7 has proved to be a good deal more secure than its predecessor, so Microsoft will hope not to find too many more flaws in IE7 in the future.

The way Internet Explorer works with the Vista operating system, essentially within a sandboxed environment, suggests these hopes may not be in vain.

Industry-watchers had expected to see eight patches released by Microsoft yesterday, though only four emerged, suggesting that some had failed to meet quality control standards before the release deadline.

Microsoft regularly issues patches for its software products on the second Tuesday of every month.

Visit the Microsoft Security page for more information.