Microsoft today issued fixes for 87 vulnerabilities in its October Patch Tuesday rollout. This marks its smallest patch release since February 2020, but admins beware: There are multiple critical flaws in Microsoft products and services that demand immediate attention.
The company has consistently released more than 100 patches for every Patch Tuesday between March and September 2020, with its largest rollouts in June and September, with 129 patches released per month. Last month brought its yearly total close to 1,000 bugs fixed.
Of the 87 patches released today, 11 are categorized as Critical, 75 are ranked Important, and 1 is classified Moderate in severity. These CVEs exist in Windows, Office and Office Services and Web Apps, Visual Studio, Azure Functions, .NET Framework, Microsoft Dynamics, Open Source Software, Exchange Server, and the Windows Codecs Library.
None of these bugs were being actively exploited at the time patches were released; however, six were publicly known, giving attackers a jump on developing exploits. It's worth noting 21 of the fixes released today address remote code execution (RCE) flaws, which should be a priority for security teams, says Chris Hass, director of information security and research at Automox.
"This presents a challenge to IT ops and SecOps teams to patch these RCEs as soon as possible," he says. "Remote code execution vulnerabilities provide an attacker with initial access to a system without any user action; the latter is often the most important." Once an attacker has this access, that person can steal data, escalate privileges, gain a larger foothold, or drop ..
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