November 2009 Black Tuesday

Microsoft just released the November 2009 crop of Black Tuesday patches, with an announcement festooned with color graphs and detailed explanations.

Golly, patching never looked so good. Six Security Bulletins covering something like 15 separately identified holes.

As usual, I look to SANS Internet Storm Center’s Black Tuesday post for insight and KB numbers.

There’s a big bunch of Excel patches all rolled into one Security Bulletin, and a Word patch, in addition to the usual crop. The only one that looks menacing to me right now is MS09-065, and it doesn’t affect Windows 7 systems.

Stay tuned. Let’s see what got screwed up this month.

We remain at MS-DEFCON 2: Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don’t do it.