Microsoft rushes out two emergency patches

Microsoft has issued an advisory that it will be issuing emergency patches for Internet Explorer and Visual Studio on Tuesday.

The patches both cover flaws that allow remote code execution on both applications.

The Internet Explorer patch is rated 'critical' and the Visual Studio download is rated 'moderate'.

"While we can't go into specifics about the issue prior to release, we can say that the Visual Studio bulletin will address an issue that can affect certain types of applications," said Microsoft in a statement.

"The Internet Explorer bulletin will provide defense-in-depth changes to Internet Explorer to help provide additional protections for the issues addressed by the Visual Studio bulletin. The Internet Explorer update will also address vulnerabilities rated as critical that are unrelated to the Visual Studio bulletin that were privately and responsibly reported,"

This is only the second time Microsoft has broken its Patch Tuesday regimen in over two years. It is generally a sign that the company has been informed that exploits for the flaws have been spotted in the wild.