Next Tuesday, December 14, Microsoft will release 17 security bulletins and updates to address the 40 vulnerabilities disclosed in them.

Only 2 of the updates have a maximum rating of Critical, with 14 maxing out at Important and one at Moderate. This doesn’t mean that there are only 2 Critical vulnerabilities; in fact, as many as 25 could be critical. We won’t know those numbers, nor the full extent of the vulnerabilities, until Tuesday. The critical vulnerabilities affect various versions of Windows and Internet Explorer.

Among the bugs fixed will be the last of the Stuxnet zero-day vulnerabilities, a local privilege elevation attack which they say has not been seen in the wild outside of Stuxnet.The Internet Explorer fix appears to be the one publicly disclosed last month.

13 of the bulletins, including both Critical ones, affect Internet Explorer and all versions of Windows. Two Important bulletins affect Microsoft Office, another SharePoint Server 2007, and the final one affects x64-based Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 and is rated Moderate.

There will also be several non-security updates on Tuesday including one for clock issues and issues caused by revised daylight saving time and time zone laws in several countries. There will also be the usual updates to the Malicious Software Removal Tool and Windows Mail Junk Filter.

In an entry on the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) blog, MSRC Director Mike Reavey does a post-mortem on updates in 2010. The total for the year (unless it changes before Tuesday, which wouldn’t be unprecedented) is 106. This is up some over previous years. Reavey attributes this to increased outside reporting, which mostly means that there’s money to be made in bug bounty programs from TippingPoint, iDefense and the like.

– on Security Watch

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