If you haven't hit the Windows Update button yet today, you should. Microsoft delivered 11 patches on Tuesday addressing 17 vulnerabilities. Six updates fix critical flaws and five address important vulnerabilities, but an already exploited Excel zero day was left unpatched:

MS08-008: Microsoft addressed a vulnerability in Vista's OLE automation that could allow for a remote code execution. Microsoft said: This security update addresses the vulnerability by adding a check on memory requests within OLE Automation. Affected software includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac and Visual Basic 6.

MS08-009: This patch addressed a vulnerability in Word that could allow a remote code execution. Microsoft noted: "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights." Affected software included Office 2000, Office 2003 and Office Word Viewer 2003. MS08-007: Another XP and Vista patch. This patch fixes the WebDAV Mini-Redirector. In a nutshell, it's another avenue to take control of a system, install programs and do other things.

MS08-010: This update fixes multiple flaws in IE that allow for remote code executions. Microsoft said: "The security update addresses these vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Internet Explorer handles HTML and validates data, as well as by setting the kill bit for an ActiveX control." Stray thought: You could just kill ActiveX.

MS08-012: This update resolves a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office Publisher. Affects Microsoft Office Publisher 2000; supported releases of Microsoft Office Publisher 2002; and supported editions of Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 Service Pack 2.

MS08-013: Microsoft's update here covers a remote code execution vulnerability in Office 2000. It's an important update for Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.