Unlucky 13 sets record as biggest-ever patch day, includes first-ever for Windows 7 RTM

Microsoft today (October 8, 2009) said it will deliver its largest-ever number of security updates next Tuesday [approximately 4 a.m. on Oct 14 in Singapore/HongKong] to fix flaws in every version of Windows, as well as Internet Explorer (IE), Office, SQL Server, important developer tools and the enterprise-grade Forefront Security client software. Among the updates will be the first for the final, or release to manufacturing [RTM] code of Windows 7, Microsoft’s newest operating system. Five of the bulletins were marked as affecting the new operating system, although Windows 7 won’t reach retail or be available on new PCs until later this month.

The company will ship a total of 13 updates next week, eight of them pegged “critical,” the highest threat ranking in its four-step scoring system, beating the previous record of 12 updates shipped in February 2007 and again in October 2008.’ That time it took almost 6 hours to complete downloading the patches, after waiting practicality for a whole to start the download. I am NOT looking forward to it, to put things mildly.

Of the 13 types of patches, I’d put at top priority the patches for Internet Explorer, Visual Studio and SMB2 (Server Message Block v2), a Microsoft-made network file- and print-sharing protocol that ships with Windows. The bug in SMB was first revealed on 7 Sep to affect Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. Since then, attack code has gone public.