Scammers absolutely love the holiday season. There are likely to be more online scam victims during those busy shopping and travelling December days than at any other time during the year. As such, we compiled a list of Christmas scams you should beware of.

Microsoft have published a Security Bulletin Summary for November 2011. A number of updates have been released including one "critical" and two "important" severity updates.

The patches address remote code execution, elevation of privilege and denial of service vulnerabilities. Importantly, an update has been released to patch the critical vulnerability in the TCP/IP stack (MS11-083). Microsoft report that "the vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends a continuous flow of specially crafted UDP packets to a closed port on a target system."

Microsoft have published a Security Bulletin Summary for October 2011. Eight updates have been released including two "critical" and six "important" severity updates.

The patches address remote code execution, elevation of privilege and denial of service vulnerabilities within Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Forefront United Access Gateway and Microsoft Host Integration Server.

Firefox 3.6.13 and Thunderbird 3.1.7 have been released. The latest versions include fixes to improve performance, stability and security.

11 Firefox updates, 9 of which are rated critical are included in this fix. More information here.

All 3 of the Thunderbird updates fix critical vulnerabilities. More info here.

Cyber Monday, the official start of the online holiday shopping season, is here. Two thirds of computer users plan to shop and / or research online this holiday season. There's little wonder why cyber thieves go into high gear this time of year - they simply follow the money to make the most profits. Surrounded by the comforts of your home, it's easy to lose sights of this.