<p>Microsoft is planning a light October edition of its regular Patch Tuesday updates next week that focuses on Office flaws and features just one critical patch.</p><p>The critical bulletin features a vulnerability in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 as well as Word Viewer and Microsoft Office Web Apps. Office for Mac is not affected. The critical vulnerability designation is "not very common for Office vulnerabilities and typically indicates that no user interaction, such as opening an affected file, is required to trigger the vulnerability," Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security tools firm Qualys, writes.</p><p>The vulnerability is of a type that might easily lend itself to malware attacks, so caution is advisable even though nothing bad has been reported as yet. "We recommend being alert for the first Bulletin and prepare for a fast roll-out of that update," Kandek added.</p><p>The other six bulletins are all rated important. Three of upcoming updates affect components of the Office family (Works 9, Infopath and Sharepoint) while two both involve privilege elevation flaws in Windows. The final bulletin covers an update for all versions of MS-SQL Server, also tackling a local escalation-of-privilege vulnerability.</p><p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/05/ms_october_patch_tuesday_pre_alert/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://blogs.csoonline.com/network-security/2395/microsoft-security-bulletin-advance-notification-october-2012-7-bulletins-1-critical">Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for October 2012: 7 bulletins ...</a> (CSO (blog))</p><p><a href="http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/microsoft-set-fix-20-bugs-next-tuesday/2012-10-05">Microsoft set to fix 20 bugs next Tuesday</a> (FierceCIO)</p><p><a href="http://www.crn.com/news/security/240008513/a-sneak-peek-at-octobers-microsoft-patch-tuesday.htm">A Sneak Peek At October's Microsoft Patch Tuesday</a> (CRN)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dW7dkPzt122XfGM-8VAe-9IlcXBsM&ned=us">63 additional articles.</a></p>