Microsoft and Adobe prepare for Patch Tuesday

Microsoft and Adobe have given advanced notice of the security patches that they will release for critical and important flaws' next Tuesday.

Microsoft will release fixes for 10 critical or important vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system, the Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft Office software.

Six were marked as critical, three as important, and one as moderate.

Adobe will also deliver critical security updates on the same day, as part of its initiative to secure regularly occurring vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat.

The quarterly security update will be part of Adobe's efforts to harden the code of its software. A serious flaw was found in March but took months to fix, even though hackers were actively exploiting it.