It’s a very special Patch Tuesday: the last one for Windows XP and Office 2003. Security vulnerabilities in those products that appear after today will not be publicly patched by Microsoft. Also losing support today is the much-despised Internet Explorer version 6.

There are four bulletins and corresponding updates this month. Two are flagged as Critical. The updates address eleven security vulnerabilities (CVEs) in Office (including Office 2003), Windows (including Windows XP), and Internet Explorer (including IE 6).

As expected, one of the updates addresses the recently-discovered vulnerability in Word’s handling of RTF documents.

The MSRC blog has a good overview of this month’s updates.

Next Tuesday is much more significant than the usual Patch Tuesday, because this crop of updates will be the last one for both Windows XP and Office 2003.

After April 8, most of the IT-enlightened world will be holding its collective breath, waiting for a likely deluge of hacks, attacks and malware based on vulnerabilities in Windows XP and Office 2003.

According to the official advance warning bulletin from Microsoft, this month’s updates will include patches for Office, Windows and Internet Explorer. Two of the patches are flagged as Critical.

One of the patches addresses the recently-discovered vulnerability in Word’s handling of RTF documents.

As usual, there’s a somewhat less technical overview of the upcoming updates on the MSRC blog.

The SANS InfoSec Handlers Diary blog has its own take on the upcoming updates.

Yesterday was Patch Tuesday, and Microsoft released five updates for Windows, Internet Explorer, and Silverlight. Two of the updates are flagged as Critical. The official summary bulletin has all the technical details, and a post on the MSRC blog has a less technical breakdown of the updates.

As expected, one of this month’s updates fixes the recently-reported zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Patch Tuesday for March 2014 happens on March 11. Microsoft currently plans to publish five new bulletins and associated patches starting at 10am PST on that date. The patches will address vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, and Silverlight. Two of the patches are flagged as Critical.

One of the patches will fix the Internet Explorer vulnerability recently reported here.

It’s the second Tuesday in February 2014, so it’s time to patch your Windows computers. Originally there were only going to be five bulletins this month, but two more were added late. The updates fix security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows and .NET. Four of the updates are flagged as Critical.

The summary bulletin has all the technical details, and Dustin Childs has posted a friendlier summary over at the MSRC blog.

As usual, a SANS ISC Diary post provides a security-focused interpretation of the month’s updates, with its own recommendations, as well as useful references (CVE identifiers) to the specific vulnerabilities addressed.