Mammoth Patch Tuesday planned for next week

Microsoft has a huge Patch Tuesday planned next week, with a record number of fixes to be rolled out. Not only is it the company's largest-ever Patch Tuesday, but it will also be the first to include the Windows 7 RTM in the normal cycle.

Of the 13 updates coming next week, 8 are rated as "critical," and they will altogether cover 34 security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's products -- including a code execution bug in SMB v2 and an FTP IIS hole. Windows 7 is directly affected by 5 of the 13 fixes, but only 1 of them, an Internet Explorer 8 vulnerability, is critical.

By looking at Microsoft's Security Bulletin Advance Notification, seemingly every supported version of Windows is included, along with Office, SQL Server, Visual Studio and various developer tools, as well as Microsoft's Forefront Client Security. Check out Microsoft's release for the full list of details.