Microsoft offered some advance notification Thursday that it would unveil five security bulletins on Tuesday, April 11, among them a fix for the Internet Explorer vulnerability that has been exploited for weeks.

Four of the five will affect Windows, and at least one will be tagged "critical," Microsoft's highest-level warning. The fifth will resolve an issue in Microsoft Office that the Redmond, Washington developer has judged as a "moderate" problem.

At the same time, the company also will roll out a refreshed edition of its malware cleaning utility, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

One of the Windows quartet will patch the "createTextRange" vulnerability that was first disclosed two weeks ago, and which has been used by attackers to plant spyware, adware, keyloggers, and Trojan horses on duped IE users......

Microsoft maps five patches, including fix for critical IE bug