Login
Microsoft this week pushed security updates to fix more than 60 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including at least one zero-day bug that is already being exploited. Microsoft also fixed a glitch that prevented some Windows 10 users from taking advantage of an extra year of security updates, which is nice because the zero-day flaw and other critical weaknesses affect all versions of Windows, including Windows 10.
Affected products this month include the Windows OS, Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, GitHub Copilot, and Azure Monitor Agent. The zero-day threat concerns a memory corruption bug deep in the Windows innards called CVE-2025-62215. Despite the flaw’s zero-day status, Microsoft has assigned it an “important” rating rather than critical, because exploiting it requires an attacker to already have access to the target’s device.
“These types of vulnerabilities are often exploited as part of a more complex attack chain,” said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute. “However, exploiting this specific vulnerability is likely to be relatively straightforward, given the existence of prior similar vulnerabilities.”
Ben McCarthy, lead cybersecurity engineer at Immersive, called attention to CVE-2025-60274, a critical weakness in a core Windows graphic component (GDI+) that is used by a massive number of applications, including Microsoft Office, web servers processing images, and countless third-party applications.
“The patch for this should be an organization’s highest priority,” McCarthy said. “While Microsoft assesses this as ‘Exploitation Less Likely,’ a 9.8-rated flaw in a ubiquitous library like GDI+ is a critical risk.”
Microsoft patched a critical bug in Office — CVE-2025-62199 — that can lead to remote code execution on a Windows system. Alex Vovk, CEO and co-founder of Action1, said this Office flaw is a high priority because it is low complexity, needs no privileges, and can be exploited just by viewing a booby-trapped message in the Preview Pane.
Many of the more concerning bugs addressed by Microsoft this month affect Windows 10, an operating system that Microsoft officially ceased supporting with patches last month. As that deadline rolled around, however, Microsoft began offering Windows 10 users an extra year of free updates, so long as they register their PC to an active Microsoft account.
Judging from the comments on last month’s Patch Tuesday post, that registration worked for a lot of Windows 10 users, but some readers reported the option for an extra year of updates was never offered. Nick Carroll, cyber incident response manager at Nightwing, notes that Microsoft has recently released an out-of-band update to address issues when trying to enroll in the Windows 10 Consumer Extended Security Update program.
“If you plan to participate in the program, make sure you update and install KB5071959 to address the enrollment issues,” Carroll said. “After that is installed, users should be able to install other updates such as today’s KB5068781 which is the latest update to Windows 10.”
Chris Goettl at Ivanti notes that in addition to Microsoft updates today, third-party updates from Adobe and Mozilla have already been released. Also, an update for Google Chrome is expected soon, which means Edge will also be in need of its own update.
The SANS Internet Storm Center has a clickable breakdown of each individual fix from Microsoft, indexed by severity and CVSS score. Enterprise Windows admins involved in testing patches before rolling them out should keep an eye on askwoody.com, which often has the skinny on any updates gone awry.
As always, please don’t neglect to back up your data (if not your entire system) at regular intervals, and feel free to sound off in the comments if you experience problems installing any of these fixes.
[Author’s note: This post was intended to appear on the homepage on Tuesday, Nov. 11. I’m still not sure how it happened, but somehow this story failed to publish that day. My apologies for the oversight.]
Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 67 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and software. Redmond warns that one of the flaws is already under active attack, and that software blueprints showing how to exploit a pervasive Windows bug patched this month are now public.
The sole zero-day flaw this month is CVE-2025-33053, a remote code execution flaw in the Windows implementation of WebDAV — an HTTP extension that lets users remotely manage files and directories on a server. While WebDAV isn’t enabled by default in Windows, its presence in legacy or specialized systems still makes it a relevant target, said Seth Hoyt, senior security engineer at Automox.
Adam Barnett, lead software engineer at Rapid7, said Microsoft’s advisory for CVE-2025-33053 does not mention that the Windows implementation of WebDAV is listed as deprecated since November 2023, which in practical terms means that the WebClient service no longer starts by default.
“The advisory also has attack complexity as low, which means that exploitation does not require preparation of the target environment in any way that is beyond the attacker’s control,” Barnett said. “Exploitation relies on the user clicking a malicious link. It’s not clear how an asset would be immediately vulnerable if the service isn’t running, but all versions of Windows receive a patch, including those released since the deprecation of WebClient, like Server 2025 and Windows 11 24H2.”
Microsoft warns that an “elevation of privilege” vulnerability in the Windows Server Message Block (SMB) client (CVE-2025-33073) is likely to be exploited, given that proof-of-concept code for this bug is now public. CVE-2025-33073 has a CVSS risk score of 8.8 (out of 10), and exploitation of the flaw leads to the attacker gaining “SYSTEM” level control over a vulnerable PC.
“What makes this especially dangerous is that no further user interaction is required after the initial connection—something attackers can often trigger without the user realizing it,” said Alex Vovk, co-founder and CEO of Action1. “Given the high privilege level and ease of exploitation, this flaw poses a significant risk to Windows environments. The scope of affected systems is extensive, as SMB is a core Windows protocol used for file and printer sharing and inter-process communication.”
Beyond these highlights, 10 of the vulnerabilities fixed this month were rated “critical” by Microsoft, including eight remote code execution flaws.
Notably absent from this month’s patch batch is a fix for a newly discovered weakness in Windows Server 2025 that allows attackers to act with the privileges of any user in Active Directory. The bug, dubbed “BadSuccessor,” was publicly disclosed by researchers at Akamai on May 21, and several public proof-of-concepts are now available. Tenable’s Satnam Narang said organizations that have at least one Windows Server 2025 domain controller should review permissions for principals and limit those permissions as much as possible.
Adobe has released updates for Acrobat Reader and six other products addressing at least 259 vulnerabilities, most of them in an update for Experience Manager. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome both recently released security updates that require a restart of the browser to take effect. The latest Chrome update fixes two zero-day exploits in the browser (CVE-2025-5419 and CVE-2025-4664).
For a detailed breakdown on the individual security updates released by Microsoft today, check out the Patch Tuesday roundup from the SANS Internet Storm Center. Action 1 has a breakdown of patches from Microsoft and a raft of other software vendors releasing fixes this month. As always, please back up your system and/or data before patching, and feel free to drop a note in the comments if you run into any problems applying these updates.
FreshRSS