Microsoft has announced that it will offers six key updates for 12 vulnerabilities next week, including a critical hole in Internet Explorer.

“Late last month, Microsoft said it was investigating an IE vulnerability after someone released proof-of-concept code affecting IE 6 and IE 7 that could be used to take control of computers,” writes CNET News’ Elinor Mills.

“Microsoft described the problem in an advisory issued November 23: ‘The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference of Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for a CSS/Style object to be accessed after the object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, Internet Explorer attempting to access a freed object can lead to running attacker-supplied code,’” Mills writes.

Click here to read the CNET News story.