Microsoft Patch Tuesday for October 2026 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities
Reported exploitedMicrosoft WindowsWindows ShellOur summary
Microsoft's October 2026 security release addresses a total of 1,415 vulnerabilities across its product line, 85 of which carry a "critical" severity rating. Cisco Talos flags that one flaw, CVE-2026-96951, a command-injection security feature bypass in Windows Shell with a CVSS score of 8.8, is already being actively exploited. Of the critical issues, 67 are remote code execution bugs, and Microsoft also lists several other high-impact vulnerabilities it believes are more likely to be exploited soon, including CVE-2026-70229 in Active Directory Domain Services and CVE-2026-70571 in Microsoft Exchange Server (both CVSS 8.1). Administrators are urged to prioritize patching given the scale of this month's update and the confirmed in-the-wild exploitation.
Below is the opening; the full story is at Cisco Talos.
From Cisco Talos
Microsoft has released its monthly security update for October 2026, which includes 1415 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 85 that Microsoft marked as "critical."
Microsoft notes that 1 of the vulnerabilities disclosed this month have been exploited in the wild
CVE-2026-96951">CVE-2026-96951 is a security feature bypass vulnerability that affects Windows Shell. The shared weakness is Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command ('Command Injection'). The vulnerability has a CVSS base score of 8.8.…
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