Microsoft rushes out two emergency patches

Microsoft has broken its Patch Tuesday schedule for the third time in two years

Microsoft has issued a security advisory to warn that it will issue emergency patches for Internet Explorer and Visual Studio on Tuesday.

The patches address flaws that could allow remote code execution on both applications. The Internet Explorer patch is rated 'critical' and the Visual Studio 'moderate'.

"While we can't go into specifics about the issue prior to release, we can say that the Visual Studio bulletin will address an issue that can affect certain types of applications," said Microsoft in a statement.

"The IE bulletin will provide defence-in-depth changes to help provide additional protections for the issues addressed by the Visual Studio bulletin. The IE update will also address vulnerabilities rated as critical that are unrelated to the Visual Studio bulletin that were privately and responsibly reported."

This is only the second time that Microsoft has broken its Patch Tuesday regimen in over two years, and is generally a sign that the company has been informed that exploits for the flaws have been spotted in the wild.

Microsoft will host webcasts on 28 July at 1pm and 4pm Pacific time to explain the issues.