Microsoft publishes details of April fixes

The April 'Patch Tuesday' fix will contain at least eight bulletins

Microsoft has released new information on the content of its upcoming monthly security update.

The April 'Patch Tuesday' fix will contain at least eight bulletins. The company has not yet provided specifics on how many individual flaws will be patched, but the package will address issues in all currently supported versions of Windows, as well as Office 2000, 2003, and Office 2007.

The Mac versions of Office 2004 and 2008 will also be receiving a security fix on Tuesday.

The Office for Mac builds are among those to receive an update for a vulnerability in Excel which could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system. It has been rated as 'critical' for Office 2000, and a less severe 'important' for all other versions of Office.

Other updates include fixes for critical vulnerabilities in Windows and Internet Explorer. Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008 will all be receiving at least one fix rated 'critcal' and several others rated 'important' for each operating system.

The fix for Internet Explorer is being rated as 'critical' for IE6 and IE7 running on Windows XP and Vista, as well as IE5 and IE6 on Windows 2000. The flaw is listed as 'important' for Windows Server 2003 and 2007 systems.

Full details on each of the eight bulletins should be available on Tuesday when Microsoft releases the actual monthly update. The company generally releases the fixes by early afternoon US Pacific Time.