Patch Tuesday for July 2016

It’s a relatively light month for Microsoft patches: only eleven this time. The updates address security issues in the usual suspects, namely Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, Office, and the Flash code that’s embedded in IE 10, IE 11, and Edge. Six of the updates are flagged as Critical. A total of fifty vulnerabilities are addressed.

Adobe joins in the fun again this month, with updates for Flash and Reader/Acrobat. The Flash update fixes a whopping fifty-two vulnerabilities, while the Reader update fixes thirty vulnerabilities. Update: an announcement for the Flash update appeared on July 14th, despite being dated July 12th.

Update 2016Jul17: Ars Technica points out that one of the Microsoft updates addresses a critical security hole in a Windows printer driver installation mechanism that dates back to Windows 95. The vulnerability was not actually closed by the update; instead, a warning was added to the driver installation process.