"[Bulletin 4] addresses an ActiveX component that's redistributed in many places in Windows," Henry wrote in an email today. "It's an issue that was previously patched and this patch cleans up the previous patch."

Bulletin 2, meanwhile, applies only to Windows XP, the still-dominant-but-aging operating system. "If you're running a remote desktop protocol in Windows XP, then Bulletin 2 should be another very important update," argued Henry. "This is a remote code execution issue and ... no authentication is needed."

The wide range of next week's updates -- two will address bugs in Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows, for instance, while others will tackle Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro 8.0 -- prompted another expert, Alex Horn, a senior product manager with CORE Security, to call August's bunch "a hacker's playground."

Microsoft will release the nine updates at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Aug 14.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at , on or subscribe to . His email address is .