Microsoft Readies Six Security Bulletins, 3 Of Them For Critical VulnerabilitiesMicrosoft Readies Six Security Bulletins, 3 Of Them For Critical Vulnerabilities

Microsoft is gearing up to release six security bulletins Tuesday that will include patches for critical vulnerabilities in Excel, Windows, and the .Net Framework.

The updates, which will come in Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday release, will include three bulletins for Microsoft Windows, two for Office, and one for the .Net Framework, which is an environment for building and running applications, including Web services. Microsoft did not reveal in advance how many patches the six security bulletins will contain.

In its notice, Microsoft did say that two of the bulletins will focus on important bugs in Office, Publisher, and Windows XP Professional. Important is a security rating one notch below critical.

One flaw that is rated as moderate affects Microsoft Windows Vista, as well as Vista x64.

The critical vulnerabilities all cause remote code execution problems. That means if the flaw is exploited, a hacker could remotely control the infected machine. The vulnerabilities rated important also cause remote code execution, which generally garners a critical rating.

Last month, Microsoft issued six security bulletins that patched 15 vulnerabilities. Two of them were in Windows Vista.

The June batch of vulnerability fixes affected 12 critical bugs. Six of the critical flaws were in Windows software and another six were in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. The one security update marked as "important" fixed two vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The update given a moderate rating patched one flaw in Windows.

In May, Microsoft released seven security bulletins, patching 19 bugs. All seven of those advisories were rated critical. Three of the security bulletins handled bugs in Microsoft Office, with one each for Windows, Microsoft Exchange and Internet Explorer. Two of the vulnerabilities affected Microsoft's highly-touted Windows Vista operating system, while six of them were bugs in various versions of the company's ubiquitous browser, Internet Explorer. Five of the bugs were in IE7.