Microsoft's August security patches, released today, provide a new chance to assess the company's promise of higher security in Windows Vista. The company released six critical security bulletins, and Windows Vista is among the versions affected by three of them.

Two of the critical bulletins involve earlier Windows versions, but not Windows Vista, suggesting that Microsoft avoided those problems in the new operating system.

But one of the three bulletins with the lower ranking of "important" affects Windows Vista alone. And it's an interesting one, dealing with RSS feeds and Windows Vista Gadgets. Here's the executive summary:

"This important security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in addition to other vulnerabilities identified during the course of the investigation. These vulnerabilities could allow an anonymous remote attacker to run code with the privileges of the logged on user. If a user subscribed to a malicious RSS feed in the Feed Headlines Gadget or added a malicious contacts file in the Contacts Gadget or a user clicked on a malicious link in the Weather Gadget an attacker could potentially run code on the system. In all attack vectors, users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights."

Gadgets are the small applications on the Vista desktop that provide snippets of information such as the time, weather and news headlines. Microsoft credits Aviv Raff of Finjan and Joshua Drake of iDefense Labs for finding elements of those problems.

One of the other "important" bulletins involves Windows Media Player, in Windows versions including Vista. And the third involves Virtual PC and Virtual Server.

Windows users who don't have Automatic Updates turned on can go to this page to download the patches for all the flaws. Mac and Linux users can commence with the obligatory comments below.