MS Patch Tuesday heads-up: 14 bulletins, 34 vulnerabilities

Microsoft is planning a very busy Patch Tuesday this month: 14 bulletins with patches for 34 vulnerabilities in Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, SQL and Silverlight.

According to Microsoft's advance notice for the August batch of patches, eight of the bulletins carry a "critical" severity rating.  The other six are rated "important."

A critical bulletin typically covers vulnerabilities that could be exploited to launch remote code execution or drive-by-download attacks.

All versions of Windows are affected by the patches this month -- from Windows XP SP3 through Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The patches will ship on August 10, 2010.