Microsoft issues fixes for 34 vulnerabilities

Microsoft has released 14 security bulletins

Microsoft has issued its August monthly security update, containing 14 bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Silverlight.

Eight of the 14 bulletins are labelled 'critical', the highest of Microsoft's security alert levels. If exploited, the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to remotely execute malicious code on a targeted system.

The remaining six bulletins are rated 'important'. These include fixes for elevation of privilege and remote code execution vulnerabilities.

Four of the critical bulletins, including fixes for Silverlight and Word, are listed as a top deployment priority.

Mac OS X users will also need to update their systems, as the August release includes patches for 'important' vulnerabilities in Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac.

"Outside the large number of fixes, there's nothing extraordinary about today's Patch Tuesday," said McAfee Labs director of research and communications Dave Marcus.

"Such a large number of fixes should make business users want to investigate whether they could use whitelisting to lock down their systems instead of rushing out fixes."