Microsoft Patches 398 Flaws Including a Windows Driver Zero
Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday fixes 398 CVEs, including actively exploited Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820 used by Lazarus for SYSTEM privilege escalation.
Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday release addresses 398 new vulnerabilities, 62 rated Critical by the Zero Day Initiative, with CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0), a use-after-free in the afd.sys Windows kernel driver, the only flaw flagged as actively exploited. Check Point Research attributed exploitation of the privilege escalation bug to Lazarus' Operation Dream Job campaign. Four unauthenticated remote code execution flaws rated 9.8 affect Windows DNS Server (CVE-2026-62878, called wormable by ZDI), Windows Deployment Services (CVE-2026-62893), Microsoft QUIC (CVE-2026-62815) and HPC Pack (CVE-2026-59124). The release also completes a two-part SharePoint fix with RCE component CVE-2026-63520, following July's authentication bypass fix CVE-2026-55040.