Microsoft Releases Record-Breaking October 2026 Patch Tuesday, Addressing Over 1,400 Vulnerabilities Including Exploited Zero-Day

Microsoft's October 2026 Patch Tuesday includes a record 1,413 vulnerability patches, with 75 rated as Critical. Notably, one zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2026-96951), a Windows Shell security feature bypass, is actively being exploited and has been added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. Other critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities were patched in Windows DHCP Server (CVE-2026-96934), Windows Text Shaping (CVE-2026-97814), and Microsoft's QUIC implementation (CVE-2026-100219, CVE-2026-105016).