On Tuesday, September 9th, Microsoft will publish their next security update release. This is the lightest patch Tuesday since January. This release will only have four bulletins with one rated "Critical" and the rest "Important." These bulletins will affect Internet Explorer, Microsoft Lync Server, Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Windows. Although a restart will be necessary to install the updates, they should require minimal effort to install and should be quicker to update than normal.
The Internet Explorer bulletin will be the highest priority to patch, but admins should not ignore the updates for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Lync. This IE bulletin marks the eighth Patch Tuesday in a row that includes patches for Internet Explorer. In the past few months we've seen IE bulletins addressing over 25 CVEs each release. This IE bulletin will be lighter than previous months but it's likely that several of these CVEs have been already been exploited in the wild or will be weaponized soon. To protect yourself from these threats, you will want to apply this update as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, last month's bulletin release may have been a bit rocky due to many users intermittently receiving the "blue screen of death" after installing the updates. Microsoft identified a bug in the MS14-045 security update and urged users to manually uninstall these updates as described on this support page. Microsoft then re-released a fix for MS14-045 on August 27th. This month's security release should go much smoother since there will be no new security updates for Kernel-mode drivers or anything affecting low-level drivers for Windows.
For a complete run-down of the September Microsoft security bulletins, please come back on September 9th. We'll see you back here soon!
