Microsoft's Security Bulletin Advance Notification for December 2008 says there will be eight bulletins and updates coming next Tuesday, Dec. 11, for a variety of Microsoft products. Six of the bulletins have a maximum rating of Critical.

One critical update affects all shipping versions of Windows. Another affects only Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. One update for Internet Explorer is rated Critical for all versions of Windows, indicating that IE 7 is affected. Another update affecting Windows Media software is rated Important and is for all versions other than the Itanium-based server products.

Four other bulletins affect various Microsoft Office and server-based products. One for Visual Basic affects only FrontPage and Project in Office, but also Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic.NET and Visual FoxPro.

One fix for Microsoft Word is rated Critical for Office 2000 and 2007 (with or without Service Pack 1), but Important most everywhere else, including Office 2003. An Excel fix is Critical only for Excel 2000, and Important elsewhere.

Lastly, a flaw in SharePoint Server 2007 and an associated flaw in Search Server 2008 are both rated Important.

There will also be the usual assortment of nonsecurity updates: an update to the Junk Mail filter, a new version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool, an update to deal with legal changes in daylight-saving time in various unspecified countries and one that addresses application compatibility problems on Windows Server 2008.