Microsoft Releases Emergency Security Patch

Microsoft announced Wednesday night that it is issuing an emergency security patch Thursday, 19 days before the next regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday on Nov. 11. It's the first time in more than a year that Microsoft has issued a so-called "out-of-band" patch.

News of the patch first appeared in a brief blog posting by MSRC security program manager Christopher Budd, who wrote that "I wanted to let you know that we've just posted an advance notification for an out-of-band bulletin release. We plan to release one Windows security bulletin with a maximum severity of critical; scheduled for a target time of 10:00 a.m. PT on Thursday Oct. 23, 2008. A restart will be required."