A large collection of patches and updates will be delivered tonight, Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of the month. Last month was a paltry bunch of updates, not really worth mentioning, but this month brings 17 security bulletins fixing 64 different vulnerabilities, the most ever fixed in one month. Here is Microsoft’s official notification about the bulletins, and here’s an article with some more details about the individual fixes.
When you walk away from your computer at the end of the day on Tuesday, close all open programs and leave your computer turned on. You should be greeted by a login screen on Wednesday morning after the system has restarted. If you are prompted to install the updates or restart your computer on Wednesday, do it! I don’t want to have any unhappy people surprised because their computers “spontaneously” restarted (after several hours of warnings).
I’ll be evaluating the updates for servers and watching for reports of problems. If the updates are safe and necessary, I’ll be installing them on my clients’ servers in a few days.
Fun Apple fact: Apple’s last update for Mac OS X a couple of weeks ago only fixed 54 security vulnerabilities, so I guess Microsoft wins, right? Still, for sheer numbers it’s hard to beat Apple’s record last November, when a mega-update fixed more than 130 vulnerabilities in a single gigantic download.
Be careful out there!
