Microsoft confirms record Patch Tuesday

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Microsoft will fix more vulnerabilities than any previous Patch Tuesday when it issues its monthly update list next week.

The Redmond giant said it would fix 64 vulnerabilities in 17 security bulletins on 12 April across various Microsoft products, including all versions of Windows.

Nine bulletins were rated as critical and the remaining eight ranked as important.

Notably, Microsoft has chosen to fix a zero-day MIME HTML (MHTML) vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer, which was used in targeted attacks.

In March, Google warned the vulnerability, initially reported by Microsoft in January, had been exploited in politically motivated attacks and hit “another popular social site.”

The bug in MHTML – a protocol used by applications to render certain kinds of documents and bring together different content onto one HTML file - was publicly disclosed back in January.

“This is a huge update and system administrators should plan for deployment as all windows systems including Server 2008 and Windows 7 are affected by critical bulletins,” said Amol Sarwate, manager at the Qualys Vulnerability Research Lab.

“Frequently used office applications like Excel 2003 through 2010 and PowerPoint 2002 through 2010 are also affected.”

The previous record Patch Tuesday was issued in October when 49 vulnerabilities were fixed in 16 bulletins.

Head here to see the advance notification for next week's Patch Tuesday.

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