Microsoft to close critical holes in August Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has announced that it will publish a total of nine security bulletins on Tuesday 14 August to close holes in its products. According to the company, five of the bulletins will fix critical problems in Windows, Internet Explorer and Exchange, as well as SQL Server, Server Software and its Developer Tools. The bulletins will address ten vulnerabilities in these products that can be exploited by an attacker to remotely execute code on a victim's system.

The four remaining bulletins are rated as important by Microsoft and affect Windows and Office. Further details about these can be found in Microsoft's Security Bulletin Advance Notification for August 2012.

Adobe has also detailed its plans for Patch Tuesday: the company will release security updates for its Reader and Acrobat products. These updates will fix unspecified critical bugs in versions 9.5.1 and earlier, and 10.1.3 and earlier of Acrobat and Reader for Windows and Mac OS X.