Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday is first in 6 months with no actively exploited zero-days
Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday is first in 6 months with no actively exploited zero-days
https://cyberscoop.com/microsoft-patch-tuesday-march-2026/
Publish Date: 2026-03-10 15:39:00
Source Domain: cyberscoop.com
Microsoft addressed 83 vulnerabilities that cut across its broad portfolio of enterprise software and underlying services in its latest security update. The company’s Patch Tuesday release contained no actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities and six defects it described as more likely to be exploited.
The vendor’s batch of patches marks the first monthly update without an actively exploited zero-day in six months.
The “lack of bugs under active attack is a nice change from last month,” when Microsoft reported six actively exploited vulnerabilities, Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, said in a blog post Tuesday.
Two vulnerabilities addressed this month — CVE-2026-21262 and CVE-2026-26127 — were listed as publicly known at the time of release. “These bugs are more bark than bite,” said Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable.
More than half of the defects in this month’s update can trigger escalated privileges, and six of those vulnerabilities — CVE-2026-23668, CVE-2026-24289, CVE-2026-24291, CVE-2026-24294, CVE-2026-25187 and CVE-2026-26132 — were rated as more likely to be exploited, Narang added.
An information-disclosure defect in Microsoft Excel — CVE-2026-26144 — showcases an attack scenario that’s likely to occur more often, according to Childs. “An attacker could use it to cause the Copilot Agent to exfiltrate data off the target,” essentially making it a zero-click operation, he wrote.
Researchers also focused on a pair of defects in Microsoft Office with CVSS ratings of 8.4 — CVE-2026-26110 and CVE-2026-26113 — that attackers can trigger to execute arbitrary code. The preview plane in Microsoft Office can serve as the attack vector for both vulnerabilities.
“Remote-code execution vulnerabilities in Office applications pose significant risks for organizations, as documents are widely shared via email, file shares,…
