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Microsoft's Record-Breaking Patch Tuesday: 974 Bugs Fixed, 2 Zero-Days Exploited
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday marked a record-breaking 974 bug fixes across Windows, Office, SQL Server, and developer tools.
Two of these vulnerabilities were actively exploited zero-days before patches existed, with one in the Windows Update Stack allowing an attacker to escalate privileges to SYSTEM level on Windows 11 versions and Windows Server 2025.
A researcher published a working exploit called ShieldCrash just hours after Microsoft's patches went out, bypassing another fix for a privilege escalation bug in Microsoft Defender's malware protection engine.