It"s been two weeks since Windows 8, and its ARM cousin Windows RT, were released to the general public. Next week, both operating systems will receive their first security updates from Microsoft since their GA launch as part of the company"s regular monthly "Patch Tuesday" event.
Microsoft issued its bare-bones alert to the upcoming patches on its Security Bulletin page today. There will be a total of six separate updates released by the company on Tuesday, November 13th that will fix 19 separate issues on a number of software products. Three of the updates will be for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 8, and all are described as "critical". Two of the updates will be for Windows RT, which is being used for Microsoft"s new Surface tablet. One of the patches is called "critical" while the other is simply "important."
As usual, the specific details about what is being fixed in these updates won"t be revealed until the patches themselves are available for download in order to not give hacker groups an advanced heads-up. Last week, a French security company called VUPEN claimed to have discovered a "day zero" exploit in Windows 8 but did not reveal what that exploit was to Microsoft, preferring instead to sell this information to governments and large corporations. Microsoft said it saw VUPEN"s claims but did not comment on if they might be accurate.
Source: Microsoft Security Bulletin page