It will roll out fixes as it always does; on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of every month. The February 2013 bundle targets flaws in the Windows Operating Systems, Internet Explorer and Exchange. All in all, 57 security issues will be addressed on Patch Tuesday.
The company will push out at least 12 updates to address the flaws - five of which come with a rating of critical. Security updates with this rating suggest that the flaws could be exploited to run arbitrary code on a victims PC if they, for example, visit a specially crafted webpage to exploit them.
Every version of Internet Explorer from IE6 needs to be patched, while flaws in the Windows operating system are considered critical only for versions below Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.
Users should not procrastinate when it comes to Microsoft's monthly patches. While the second Tuesday of every month has become known as "Patch Tuesday", there is a lesser known monthly special day, known by some as "Exploit Wednesday".
Malware writers and others dissect the updates pushed out on Patch Tuesday and develop exploits as quickly as they can against the vulnerabilities, hoping to catch out users who procrastinate when it comes to keeping updated.
Microsoft's advisory for Feb 2013's patches: technet.microsoft.com
Written by: James Delahunty @ 8 Feb 2013 17:08
