Microsoft released its February 2013 `Patch Tuesday' updates on February 12, issuing 12 security bulletins - five of them rated as `critical' - that addressed as many as 57 vulnerabilities in the company's Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), Exchange Server and the .NET Framework.

The latest round of security updates released by Microsoft included server as well as client side products; and addressed one serious graphics zero-day vulnerability, along with a host of critical flaws in the IE.

The remote code execution zero-day vulnerability fixed by Microsoft in the February update pertains to a flaw in the manner in which Windows implements Vector Markup Language, which is an XML-based file format that the IE uses for displaying two-dimensional graphics. According to vulnerability management experts, the mentioned flaw was detected after an attack used for collecting information.

Meanwhile, the security patches which Microsoft has released for the IE fix 13 coding errors in the company's browser; thereby addressing remote code execution vulnerabilities which attackers can exploit in drive-by attacks.

With several other security vulnerabilities also having been patched by Microsoft in the latest update, Ross Barrett - Senior Manager of Security Engineering at Rapid7 - said that the Microsoft administrators have released "a number of high priority fixes;" and added: "On the plus side, none of the issues patched this month are known to be actively being exploited "in the wild."