Happy 10th birthday, Patch Tuesday!
10 years ago this month, Microsoft made a commitment to offer better security for its various software products, including Windows. That included setting up a regularly scheduled time of the month where Microsoft would release new security bulletins. The decision was made to establish the second Tuesday of the month as the date for these software updates.
The event has come to be known informally as "Patch Tuesday" in IT circles and since then the date has come to be recognized as a positive move for Microsoft, helping to get rid of its previous reputation for not keeping in touch with customers on software updates. Today, Microsoft released the October 2013 "Patch Tuesday" security bulletins, although it made no specific effort to mention the 10th anniversary of its software update schedule.
As promised last week, there were eight bulletins in the October 2013 set of updates. Four of them are labeled as "Critical", including one that affects all versions of Internet Explorer. The patch closed a bug in IE that was already being exploited by hackers. The IE patch was also the first that will be applied to Windows 8.1, ahead of its launch on October 18th.
Source: Microsoft
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