Microsoft - Tuesday October 2010: 16 Updates Correcting 49 Security Related Issues

This month's Patch Tuesday is a big one - 16 individual updates correcting a total of 49 security issues across several operating systems and other Microsoft software.

Many of these issues could allow a remote attacker to take completely control of your system. The attacker could then perform tasks on the computer like an administrator could including viewing, changing, and deleting information.

What these updates do:

These patches from Microsoft update several individual files involved in making the affected operating system or software work.

These updates may apply to you if: you're running any of Microsoft's supported operating systems including Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008, and 2003. Several updates also apply to those running certain versions of MS Office and Internet Explorer.

More Information:

These are serious issues with Windows and other software and you should apply all updates that affect your specific software or version of Windows. Most of these issues are categorized as Critical and some others as Important or Moderate.

In most cases, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the above Windows operating systems and software programs are affected.

Some updates will require that you restart your computer but some will not. If you use Windows Update to install these updates simultaneously, chances are you will need to restart.

Automatically install: via Windows Update.