Microsoft Patches 400+ Vulnerabilities, Including Zero-Day Exploited by North Korean Attackers

Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday addressed over 400 vulnerabilities, notably a use-after-free flaw (CVE-2026-68820) in Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock (AFD.sys) that allows local privilege escalation. This zero-day has been actively exploited by North Korean threat actors in "Operation Dream Job" to deploy a kernel-mode rootkit.