As usual, Microsoft released its pre-announcement for the upcoming patch tuesday. The summary looks pretty much like an average patch tuesday with 7 bulletins total:

Only one of the bulletin rates as critical, and it affects Office as well as Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Office Web Apps. Given the rating of critical, and the fact that it does affect desktop as well as server components, this is likely the patch to watch out for.

3 other patches, all rated important, are affecting Office (and Sharepoint). Two patches affect Windows and one patch affects SQL Server. 

So get ready to reboot your systems. After a simple September, this one is more of a normal patch month. Also, don't forget that the weak certificate patch will be pushed out this month.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-oct

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Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
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