Microsoft's February Update Fixes 6 Actively Exploited Zero Days, Update ASAP

Microsoft is addressing nearly 60 CVEs with its upcoming "Patch Tuesday" update for Windows 11, six of which are actively-exploited zero-day vulnerabilities. Per KrebsOnSecurity, the most sever CVEs are CVE-2026-21510, CVE-2026-21513, CVE-2026-21514, CVE-2026-21533, CVE-2026-21519, and CVE-2026-21525. The issues outlined in these Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures span from Word vulnerabilities to Desktop Window Manager. The issues patched over and above the six zero days include several remote code execution vulnerabilities across various development environments. CVE-2026-21510, for example, relates to a Windows Shell vulnerability where a malicious link can run attacker-controlled content.


CVE-2026-21513 and CVE-2026-21514 refer to MSHTML vulnerabilities and a related Word exploit, respectively. Meanwhile, CVE-2026-21533 and CVE-2026-21519 also refer to elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in the Windows Remote Desktop Services and Desktop Window Manager. CVE2-2026-21525 is unpaired, but refers to a denial-of-service vulnerability in the Windows Remote Access Connection Manager used to maintain corporate VPN connections.

The wealth and diversity of these vulnerabilities means most users should apply these updates sooner or later. Hopefully NVIDIA and other vendors are all able to ship drivers fully compatible with the previous January security update, which triggers some instability with particular hardware configurations. Of particular concern are users of legacy printers and scanners, who may need to buy new devices who want to install this update and aren't getting new driver support from the device support.

Image Credit: Franz26 from Pixabay