Tech Shout!

Microsoft Corp. came out with Patch Tuesday for October, issuing a total number of 10 security patches on October 10. Five of the patches were for vulnerabilities in its Windows program, four were for Office suite and one was for the .NET platform. Both the Windows and Office vulnerabilities carried the highest rating of critical. The company said with the ten patches, it is fixing as many as 28 security issues, a majority of them involving the Office suite.

The company said delivery of the patches may be delayed in the case of some consumers in view of technical difficulties with the update servers used in delivering the patches.

Two of the critical updates are intended for Windows, fixing the remote code execution vulnerabilities — one in XML Core Services and the other in Windows Shell. Similar issues in the Office suite too have been fixed — in PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

Microsoft said one important flaw, a Windows server service bug that could cause a denial of service within the operating system, has been repaired. The flaw in ASP.NET involved information disclosure and another in the Windows Object Packager that allowed for remote code execution too were fixed by the patches.

Microsoft said six of the critical flaws could allow a hacker to get access to other people’s computers.

The company had disclosed in September it knew attackers were already trying to take advantage of the defects in Windows, Word and PowerPoint programs. A company official said there were reports to limited attacks exploiting the flaws.

The company is, however, yet to fix another known flaw, the affecting the Internet Explorer browser, which is part of its Windows operating system.