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Microsoft September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 966 flaws, 2 zero-days
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes a record 966 flaws, including two Windows zero-days actively exploited to gain SYSTEM privileges.
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses a record 966 vulnerabilities, including 105 rated Critical, 81 of them remote code execution bugs. Two zero-days were actively exploited: a Windows Update Stack link-following flaw and a Windows ALPC heap-based buffer overflow, both allowing local elevation to SYSTEM privileges. The ALPC flaw was reported by Volexity and Proofpoint researchers, while the Update Stack flaw was credited to Romain Deperne and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Centre. Microsoft shared no details on how the flaws were exploited in attacks.
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The September 2026 Security Update Review
ZDI's September 2026 Microsoft update review lists two already-exploited Windows EoP zero-days and dozens of critical RCEs across Office, SQL Server, and Windows services.
The review catalogs Microsoft's September 2026 fixes, marking CVE-2026-85880 (Windows ALPC) and CVE-2026-81963 (Windows Update Stack) as already exploited elevation-of-privilege issues. It also lists critical RCE flaws in Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, SQL Server, Windows DNS, DHCP and Failover Cluster, plus graphics component RCEs. Azure-side fixes include Entra ID, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Language and Azure AD B2C elevation-of-privilege flaws.
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September 2026 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, (Tue, Sep 8th)
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes a record 973 vulnerabilities, including 113 critical and two Windows privilege-escalation flaws already exploited in the wild.
Microsoft patched 973 vulnerabilities this month, its largest Patch Tuesday ever and far above the previous record of 664 set in July 2026, with 113 rated critical. Two Important elevation-of-privilege flaws (CVSS 7.8) are confirmed exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-81963 in the Windows Update Stack (improper link resolution, affects Windows 11 and Server 2025) and CVE-2026-85880 in Windows ALPC (heap-based buffer overflow allowing sandbox escape to SYSTEM, affects Windows 10 and Server 2012-2022). Critical unauthenticated RCEs (CVSS 9.8) were also fixed in Skype for Business Server (CVE-2026-66302), Windows Message Queuing (CVE-2026-69579), and Windows RRAS (CVE-2026-69590). SANS urges prioritizing the two exploited EoP fixes, then patching exposed MSMQ, RRAS, and Skype for Business deployments.
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Microsoft Fixes 72 Flaws, Including Patch for Actively Exploited CLFS Vulnerability
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CISA Red Team Compromised Two Critical Infrastructure Orgs, One Detected Nothing
CISA red teams fully compromised two critical infrastructure orgs with similar tradecraft; one detected nothing, the other contained phishing within minutes.
CISA advisory AA26-237A, 'A Tale of Two SOCs,' describes two simultaneous red team assessments of a Government Services organization and a Water and Wastewater Systems organization, both compromised to the domain level. Organization A never detected the intrusion, enabled by default credentials, a misconfigured AD CS template (ESC1), cleartext credentials, non-expiring static AWS keys, and over-permissioned Entra ID applications. Organization B detected and isolated phishing within 2-20 minutes, though the red team still reached krbtgt via DCSync from cleartext SCCM credentials. CISA attributes the outcome gap to people and processes rather than the security tools themselves.
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Privilege escalation from IIS AppPool to NT Authority/SYSTEM
A write-up demonstrates privilege escalation from an IIS AppPool identity to NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM via the AD CS RPC endpoint.
A technical write-up details a Windows privilege escalation path that moves an IIS application pool identity to NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM by abusing the Active Directory Certificate Services RPC endpoint. The technique chains the restricted IIS AppPool service context with AD CS access to reach SYSTEM on the host. The post is relevant for defenders mapping privilege escalation paths on Windows web servers.
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Microsoft’s September 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses 964 CVEs (CVE-2026-81963, CVE-2026-85880)
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes a record 964 CVEs, including two zero-days actively exploited in the wild.
Microsoft patched a record 964 CVEs in its September 2026 Patch Tuesday release, with 101 rated critical and 824 rated important, making it the largest Patch Tuesday to date. The release includes fixes for two zero-days that were exploited in the wild, with CVE-2026-81963 and CVE-2026-85880 highlighted in the release. Affected products span Windows core components, Office, Exchange, .NET, Visual Studio, Active Directory services (including AD CS and AD FS) and numerous Azure services. Tenable notes the release surpasses July's as the biggest ever.
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AD Rights Management Service (Part 1): Architecture, Deprecation, and Reconnaissance
Huntress maps AD RMS architecture and recon paths, setting up an offline key-extraction attack against its unrotatable 255-year root key.
Huntress's multi-part research examines Active Directory Rights Management Services, Microsoft's enterprise DRM role that still ships in Windows Server 2025 despite migration guidance favoring Azure Information Protection. Part 1 covers the trust model and how an ordinary domain account can locate RMS clusters and read rights-policy templates. Part 2 will detail four independent paths for extracting the Server Licensor Certificate (SLC) private key via service-group membership and the configuration database, enabling fully offline decryption of protected documents. The SLC certificate is valid from 2002 to 2258 and has no key-rotation mechanism, so a stolen key decrypts protected content indefinitely.
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CISA Shares 17 Techniques Used by Hackers to Compromise Active Directory
CISA and five international agencies publish joint guidance detailing 17 techniques attackers use to compromise Microsoft Active Directory environments.
CISA, NSA, and the Australian Signals Directorate's ACSC, with contributions from Canadian, UK, and New Zealand cyber centers, released technical guidance on 17 Active Directory attack techniques. It covers AD Domain Services, AD Certificate Services, and AD Federation Services, including Kerberoasting, DCSync, Golden Ticket, Golden SAML, Skeleton Key, and Shadow Credentials. The guidance recommends treating domain controllers, CAs, AD FS servers, and Entra Connect systems as Tier 0 assets with phishing-resistant MFA, Kerberos pre-authentication enforcement, and disabling NTLM/SMBv1.
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Microsoft fixes actively exploited zero-days (CVE-2024-43451, CVE-2024-49039)
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CISA Warns Hackers Exploit 17 Active Directory Techniques to Gain Control of Enterprise Networks
CISA and Five Eyes agencies issued joint guidance detailing 17 Active Directory attack techniques like Kerberoasting and DCSync, with hardening and detection advice.
CISA, the NSA, and cyber agencies from Australia, Canada, the UK, and New Zealand released joint guidance on September 15 covering 17 techniques attackers use to compromise Active Directory, including AD CS, Certificate Services, and Federation Services attacks. Named techniques include Kerberoasting, AS-REP roasting, password spraying, DCSync, NTDS.dit dumping, Golden and Silver Tickets, Golden SAML, and Skeleton Key. Recommendations include minimizing SPN accounts, enforcing AES encryption, disabling NTLM, account lockout thresholds of five attempts, phishing-resistant MFA, and Tier 0 prioritization. The guide also lists Windows event IDs 4769, 4768, 4625, 4771, and 2889 for detecting Kerberoasting and password spraying on domain controllers.
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⚡ Weekly Recap: Rogue AI Agents, Check Point Exploit, Slopsquatting, ClickFix Lures and More
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NightEagle targets Russian companies
Kaspersky links NightEagle (APT-Q-95) attacks on Russian firms to compromised VPN credentials, a GhostContainer Exchange backdoor, RDP tunneling, BlueKeep exploitation, and DCSync.
Kaspersky's Global Emergency Response Team investigated NightEagle (APT-Q-95) incidents over the past year, finding the group—active since at least 2023 and formerly focused on Asia—now targeting Russian businesses. Attackers used compromised VPN credentials and deployed the GhostContainer .NET backdoor on Microsoft Exchange servers, built from Neo-reGeorg, a CVE-2020-0688 exploit, and ysoserial's GhostWebShell, injected in memory via VIEWSTATE manipulation with AMSI bypass. For lateral movement they combined Microsoft dev tunnels with rdp2tcp over RDP, exploited BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) to create local admin accounts, and performed DCSync replication against Active Directory.
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Metasploit Wrap Up: This One Goes to Sixteen!
Metasploit adds 16 modules including 10 exploits, five covering CISA KEV vulnerabilities in Cisco, SonicWall, PaperCut, JetBrains and Langflow.
Rapid7's weekly Metasploit update ships 16 new modules, 10 of them exploit modules, with five targeting CISA KEV entries. New exploits cover Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center auth bypass (CVE-2026-20079), a SonicWall SMA1000 SSRF-to-root RCE chain (CVE-2026-83548/CVE-2026-83549), JetBrains TeamCity deserialization RCE (CVE-2026-63077), PaperCut NG/MF chain (CVE-2026-81578/CVE-2026-82078), and Langflow authenticated RCE (CVE-2026-19295). The SonicWall and PaperCut chains were reported as actively exploited zero-days, and a new ESC8 relay module exploits CVE-2026-20929 against AD CS Web Enrollment.
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Aurora Ransomware Operators Use Cursor AI in Attacks Against 10 Targets
Aurora ransomware operators used Cursor AI running Claude Sonnet to plan and execute intrusions against dozens of organizations in nine countries.
CloudSEK and Gambit Security analyzed exposed infrastructure tied to the Russian-speaking Aurora (Aur0ra) group, revealing months of activity against more than 20 organizations across nine countries between April and July 2026, with 33 victims listed by Ransomware.Live. The operator used the Cursor agentic coding assistant to plan attacks in Russian, including an AD CS exploitation plan, and Gambit observed Cursor Agent (running Anthropic's Claude Sonnet) performing hands-on exploitation tasks such as Nmap scanning, NetExec enumeration, NTLM relay, and certificate attacks against 10 targets. Attacks begin with email bombing plus IT help desk vishing via Xray-core, followed by SMB/LDAP/WinRM/RDP lateral movement, log clearing, Defender disabling, and exfiltration; the Windows and Linux/ESXi encryptors are built from a single Zig codebase, with shadow copy deletion and VM-killing before encryption.
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Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses 398 CVEs (CVE-2026-68820)
Tenable reports Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses 398 CVEs including three zero-days, one exploited in the wild (CVE-2026-68820).
Microsoft patched 398 CVEs in its August 2026 Patch Tuesday release, with 42 rated critical, 355 important, and one moderate, and three zero-days among them. One zero-day is confirmed as exploited in the wild. The release covers components including .NET, .NET Framework, Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), Azure services, and Windows. Tenable's count omits two CVEs assigned by MITRE, CVE-2026-6726 and CVE-2026-6727.
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Microsoft Patch Tuesday, November 2024 Edition
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Microsoft Releases Fix for New Zero
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