Thursday 9pm est........................
Microsoft will release six groups of security patches next week, fixing bugs in the latest versions of Excel, Windows XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003. Online criminals will typically e-mail the victim with a maliciously encoded Office attachment that, once opened, gives the hacker access to the victim's computer. Microsoft isn't releasing further details on the flaws it's fixing until Tuesday. Three other less-critical updates are also planned for next week's "Patch Tuesday" security fixes. They include "important" updates for Microsoft Publisher 2007 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 as well as a fix for Windows Vista. In descending order of severity, Microsoft rates updates as critical, important, moderate, or low.