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Patch Tuesday, January 2026 Edition
Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today.
Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today.
January’s Microsoft zero-day flaw — CVE-2026-20805 — is brought to us by a flaw in the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), a key component of Windows that organizes windows on a user’s screen. Kev Breen, senior director of cyber threat research at Immersive, said despite awarding CVE-2026-20805 a middling CVSS score of 5.5, Microsoft has confirmed its active exploitation in the wild, indicating that threat actors are already leveraging this flaw against organizations.
Breen said vulnerabilities of this kind are commonly used to undermine Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), a core operating system security control designed to protect against buffer overflows and other memory-manipulation exploits.
“By revealing where code resides in memory, this vulnerability can be chained with a separate code execution flaw, transforming a complex and unreliable exploit into a practical and repeatable attack,” Breen said. “Microsoft has not disclosed which additional components may be involved in such an exploit chain, significantly limiting defenders’ ability to proactively threat hunt for related activity. As a result, rapid patching currently remains the only effective mitigation.”
Chris Goettl, vice president of product management at Ivanti, observed that CVE-2026-20805 affects all currently supported and extended security update supported versions of the Windows OS. Goettl said it would be a mistake to dismiss the severity of this flaw based on its “Important” rating and relatively low CVSS score.
“A risk-based prioritization methodology warrants treating this vulnerability as a higher severity than the vendor rating or CVSS score assigned,” he said.
Among the critical flaws patched this month are two Microsoft Office remote code execution bugs (CVE-2026-20952 and CVE-2026-20953) that can be triggered just by viewing a booby-trapped message in the Preview Pane.
Our October 2025 Patch Tuesday “End of 10” roundup noted that Microsoft had removed a modem driver from all versions after it was discovered that hackers were abusing a vulnerability in it to hack into systems. Adam Barnett at Rapid7 said Microsoft today removed another couple of modem drivers from Windows for a broadly similar reason: Microsoft is aware of functional exploit code for an elevation of privilege vulnerability in a very similar modem driver, tracked as CVE-2023-31096.
“That’s not a typo; this vulnerability was originally published via MITRE over two years ago, along with a credible public writeup by the original researcher,” Barnett said. “Today’s Windows patches remove agrsm64.sys and agrsm.sys. All three modem drivers were originally developed by the same now-defunct third party, and have been included in Windows for decades. These driver removals will pass unnoticed for most people, but you might find active modems still in a few contexts, including some industrial control systems.”
According to Barnett, two questions remain: How many more legacy modem drivers are still present on a fully-patched Windows asset; and how many more elevation-to-SYSTEM vulnerabilities will emerge from them before Microsoft cuts off attackers who have been enjoying “living off the land[line] by exploiting an entire class of dusty old device drivers?”
“Although Microsoft doesn’t claim evidence of exploitation for CVE-2023-31096, the relevant 2023 write-up and the 2025 removal of the other Agere modem driver have provided two strong signals for anyone looking for Windows exploits in the meantime,” Barnett said. “In case you were wondering, there is no need to have a modem connected; the mere presence of the driver is enough to render an asset vulnerable.”
Immersive, Ivanti and Rapid7 all called attention to CVE-2026-21265, which is a critical Security Feature Bypass vulnerability affecting Windows Secure Boot. This security feature is designed to protect against threats like rootkits and bootkits, and it relies on a set of certificates that are set to expire in June 2026 and October 2026. Once these 2011 certificates expire, Windows devices that do not have the new 2023 certificates can no longer receive Secure Boot security fixes.
Barnett cautioned that when updating the bootloader and BIOS, it is essential to prepare fully ahead of time for the specific OS and BIOS combination you’re working with, since incorrect remediation steps can lead to an unbootable system.
“Fifteen years is a very long time indeed in information security, but the clock is running out on the Microsoft root certificates which have been signing essentially everything in the Secure Boot ecosystem since the days of Stuxnet,” Barnett said. “Microsoft issued replacement certificates back in 2023, alongside CVE-2023-24932 which covered relevant Windows patches as well as subsequent steps to remediate the Secure Boot bypass exploited by the BlackLotus bootkit.”
Goettl noted that Mozilla has released updates for Firefox and Firefox ESR resolving a total of 34 vulnerabilities, two of which are suspected to be exploited (CVE-2026-0891 and CVE-2026-0892). Both are resolved in Firefox 147 (MFSA2026-01) and CVE-2026-0891 is resolved in Firefox ESR 140.7 (MFSA2026-03).
“Expect Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge updates this week in addition to a high severity vulnerability in Chrome WebView that was resolved in the January 6 Chrome update (CVE-2026-0628),” Goettl said.
As ever, the SANS Internet Storm Center has a per-patch breakdown by severity and urgency. Windows admins should keep an eye on askwoody.com for any news about patches that don’t quite play nice with everything. If you experience any issues related installing January’s patches, please drop a line in the comments below.
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Microsoft kicks off 2026 with 115 security updates, including a fix for an actively exploited zero-day. Protect your Windows and Office systems today.
Microsoft kicks off 2026 with 115 security updates, including a fix for an actively exploited zero-day. Protect your Windows and Office systems today.
Microsoft kicks off 2026 with 115 security updates, including a fix for an actively exploited zero-day. Protect your Windows and Office systems today.
Microsoft kicks off 2026 with 115 security updates, including a fix for an actively exploited zero-day. Protect your Windows and Office systems today.
Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its first security update for 2026, addressing 114 security flaws, including one vulnerability that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 114 flaws, eight are rated Critical, and 106 are rated Important in severity. As many as 58 vulnerabilities have been classified as privilege escalation, followed by 22 information disclosure, 21 remote code
Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its first security update for 2026, addressing 114 security flaws, including one vulnerability that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 114 flaws, eight are rated Critical, and 106 are rated Important in severity. As many as 58 vulnerabilities have been classified as privilege escalation, followed by 22 information disclosure, 21 remote code
Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its first security update for 2026, addressing 114 security flaws, including one vulnerability that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 114 flaws, eight are rated Critical, and 106 are rated Important in severity. As many as 58 vulnerabilities have been classified as privilege escalation, followed by 22 information disclosure, 21 remote code
Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its first security update for 2026, addressing 114 security flaws, including one vulnerability that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 114 flaws, eight are rated Critical, and 106 are rated Important in severity. As many as 58 vulnerabilities have been classified as privilege escalation, followed by 22 information disclosure, 21 remote code
Microsoft has released its monthly security update for January 2026, which includes 112 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 8 that Microsoft marked as “critical”.
Microsoft has released its monthly security update for January 2026, which includes 112 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 8 that Microsoft marked as “critical”.
Microsoft has released its monthly security update for January 2026, which includes 112 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 8 that Microsoft marked as “critical”.
This week made one thing clear: small oversights can spiral fast. Tools meant to save time and reduce friction turned into easy entry points once basic safeguards were ignored. Attackers didn’t need novel tricks. They used what was already exposed and moved in without resistance. Scale amplified the damage. A single weak configuration rippled out to millions. A repeatable flaw worked again and
Microsoft patched a record number of 147 new CVEs this month, though only three are rated "Critical."
An issue was discovered in Broadcom) LSI PCI-SV92EX Soft Modem Kernel Driver through 2.2.100.1 (aka AGRSM64.sys). There is Local Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM via a Stack Overflow in RTLCopyMemory (IOCTL 0x1b2150). An attacker can exploit this to elevate privileges from a medium-integrity process to SYSTEM. This can also be used to bypass kernel-level protections such as AV or PPL, because exploit code runs with high-integrity privileges and can be used in coordinated BYOVD (bring your own vulnerable driver) ransomware campaigns.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) on Thursday released guidance to help organizations detect and prevent infections of a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit called BlackLotus. To that end, the agency is recommending that "infrastructure owners take action by hardening user executable policies and monitoring the integrity of the boot partition." BlackLotus is an advanced
Plus: Microsoft patches two zero-day flaws, Google’s Android and Chrome get some much-needed updates, and more.
Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2023, including vulnerabilities that were added between April and May Patch Tuesdays. As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to analyse and prioritize vulnerabilities. I took the comments about the vulnerabilities from the Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7, ZDI Patch Tuesday reviews. It’s been a […]
A ransomware attack on the city of Dallas, Texas is still disrupting many social services as of Wednesday, including hampering police communications and operations and potentially putting personal information at risk.
Microsoft has rolled out Patch Tuesday updates for May 2023 to address 38 security flaws, including one zero-day bug that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) said the volume is the lowest since August 2021, although it pointed out that "this number is expected to rise in the coming months." Of the 38 vulnerabilities, six are rated Critical and
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: Microsoft Tags: CVE-2023-29336 Tags: CVE-2023-24932 Tags: bootkit Tags: CVE-2023-29325 Tags: Outlook Tags: preview Tags: CVE-2023-24941 Tags: Apple Tags: Cisco Tags: Google Tags: Android Tags: VMWare Tags: SAP Tags: Mozilla Microsoft's Patch Tuesday round up for May 2023 includes patches for three zero-day vulnerabilities and one critical remote code execution vulnerability (Read more...) The post Update now! May 2023 Patch Tuesday tackles three zero-days appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Microsoft today released software updates to fix at least four dozen security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, including patches for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks.
**What kind of security feature could be bypassed by successfully exploiting this vulnerability?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could bypass Secure Boot.