Microsoft Advance Notification for February 2013

The Advance Notification of Patch Tuesday from Microsoft has twelve bulletins listed for this month. Not a small number by any means but not completely unmanageable either. Five bulletins are listed as critical and seven important. There will be six bulletins addressing remote code execution, four elevation of privilege and two denial of service. Seven definitely require a restart after patching and five might require a restart after patching. Two of the critical ones are in Internet Explorer, which can't be good, the other critical ones are in Windows and Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010. The important ones are scattered between .NET, server software and Windows itself.

The two critical bulletins in Internet Explorer seem to impact all versions, which includes 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Which will probably make these two the most critical of all the critical patches this month. Although if the IE updates don't take the top spot the patch for Exchange most definitely will. The patch will impact Exchange2007 and 2010, will require a restart and result in remote code execution if not applied. If you are an Exchange Server Admin I suggest scheduling that reboot now and not waiting until the actual notification next week.

Everything else this month looks pretty run of the mill as far as Microsoft patches go. Not to say they aren't important just not asdramatic as critical patches for IE and Exchange. Also this month look for an update to the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. We should see the full release from Microsoft on schedule next Tuesday.