Microsoft Patches 84 Flaws in March Patch Tuesday, Including Two Public Zero-Days  Ravie Lakshmanan  Mar 11, 2026 Patch Tuesday / Vulnerability Microsoft on Tuesday released patches for a set of 84 new security vulnerabilities affecting various software components, including two that have been listed as publicly known. Of these, eight are rated Critical, and 76 are rated Important in severity. Forty-six of the patched vulnerabilities relate to privilege escalation, followed by 18 remote code execution, 10 information disclosure, four spoofing, four denial-of-service, and two security feature bypass flaws. The fixes are in addition to 10 vulnerabilities that have been addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the February 2026 Patch Tuesday update . The two publicly disclosed zero-days are CVE-2026-26127 (CVSS score: 7.5), a denial-of-service vulnerability in .NET, and CVE-2026-21262 (CVSS score: 8.8), an elevation of privilege vulnerability in SQL Server. The vulnerability with the highest CVSS score in this month's update is a critical remote code execution flaw in the Microsoft Devices Pricing Program. CVE-2026-21536 (CVSS score: 9.8), per Microsoft, has been fully mitigated, and no action is required from users. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered autonomous vulnerability discovery platform XBOW has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue. "This month, over half (55%) of all Patch Tuesday CVEs were privilege escalation bugs, and of those, six were rated exploitation more likely across Windows Graphics Component, Windows Accessibility Infrastructure, Windows Kernel, Windows SMB Server, and Winlogon," Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, said. "We know these bugs are typically used by threat actors as part of post-compromise activity, once they get onto systems through other means (social engineering, exploitation of another vulnerability)." The Winlogon privilege escalation flaw ( CVE-2026-25187 , CVSS score: 7.8), in particular, leverages improper link resolution to obtain SYSTEM privileges. Google Project Zero researcher James Forshaw has been acknowledged for reporting the vulnerability. "The flaw allows a locally authenticated attacker with low privileges to exploit a link-following condition in the Winlogon process and escalate to SYSTEM privileges," Jacob Ashdown, cybersecurity engineer at Immersive, said. "The vulnerability requires no user interaction and has low attack complexity, making it a straightforward target once an attacker gains a foothold." Another vulnerability of note is CVE-2026-26118 (CVSS score: 8.8), a server-side request forgery bug in the Azure Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that could allow an authorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network. "An attacker could exploit this issue by sending specially crafted input to an Azure Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server tool that accepts user‑provided parameters," Microsoft said. "If the attacker can interact with the MCP‑backed agent, they can submit a malicious URL in place of a normal Azure resource identifier. The MCP Server then sends an outbound request to that URL and, in doing so, may include its managed identity token. This allows the attacker to capture that token without requiring administrative access." Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could permit an attacker to obtain the permissions associated with the MCP Server's managed identity. The attacker could then leverage this behavior to access or perform actions on any resources that the managed identity is authorized to reach. Among the Critical-severity bugs resolved by Microsoft is an information disclosure flaw in Excel. Tracked as CVE-2026-26144 (CVSS score of 7.5), it has been described as a case of cross-site scripting that occurs as a result of improper neutralization of input during web page generation. The Windows maker said an attacker who exploited the shortcoming could potentially cause Copilot Agent mode to exfiltrate data as part of a zero-click attack. "Information disclosure vulnerabilities are especially dangerous in corporate environments where Excel files often contain financial data, intellectual property, or operational records," Alex Vovk, CEO and co-founder of Action1, said in a statement. "If exploited, attackers could silently extract confidential information from internal systems without triggering obvious alerts. Organizations using AI-assisted productivity features may face increased exposure, as automated agents could unintentionally transmit sensitive data outside corporate boundaries." The patches come as Microsoft said it's changing the default behavior of Windows Autopatch by enabling hotpatch security updates to help secure devices at a faster pace. "This change in default behavior comes to all eligible devices in Microsoft Intune and those accessing the service via Microsoft Graph API starting with the May 2026 Windows security update," Redmond said . "Applying security fixes without waiting for a restart can get organizations to 90% compliance in half the time, while you remain in control." Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News , Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE      Tweet  Share  Share  Share   Share on Facebook  Share on Twitter  Share on Linkedin  Share on Reddit  Share on Hacker News  Share on Email  Share on WhatsApp Share on Facebook Messenger  Share on Telegram SHARE  Azure , Cloud security , cybersecurity , Microsoft , patch Tuesday , privilege escalation , remote code execution , SQL Server , Vulnerability , windows security Trending News ClawJacked Flaw Lets Malicious Sites Hijack Local OpenClaw AI Agents via WebSocket Coruna iOS Exploit Kit Uses 23 Exploits Across Five Chains Targeting iOS 13–17.2.1 ⚡ Weekly Recap: Qualcomm 0-Day, iOS Exploit Chains, AirSnitch Attack and Vibe-Coded Malware ThreatsDay Bulletin: DDR5 Bot Scalping, Samsung TV Tracking, Reddit Privacy Fine and More Microsoft Reveals ClickFix Campaign Using Windows Terminal to Deploy Lumma Stealer OpenAI Codex Security Scanned 1.2 Million Commits and Found 10,561 High-Severity Issues Anthropic Finds 22 Firefox Vulnerabilities Using Claude Opus 4.6 AI Model Cisco Confirms Active Exploitation of Two Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Vulnerabilities 149 Hacktivist DDoS Attacks Hit 110 Organizations in 16 Countries After Middle East Conflict Open-Source CyberStrikeAI Deployed in AI-Driven FortiGate Attacks Across 55 Countries Starkiller Phishing Suite Uses AitM Reverse Proxy to Bypass Multi-Factor Authentication Google Confirms CVE-2026-21385 in Qualcomm Android Component Exploited New Chrome Vulnerability Let Malicious Extensions Escalate Privileges via Gemini Panel APT28 Tied to CVE-2026-21513 MSHTML 0-Day Exploited Before Feb 2026 Patch Tuesday Popular Resources Self-Hosted WAF: Block SQLi, XSS, and Bots Before They Reach Your Apps 19,053 Confirmed Breaches in 2025 – Key Trends and Predictions for 2026 Read CYBER360 2026: From Zero Trust Limits to Data-Centric Security Paths Identity Controls Checklist: Find Missing Protections in Apps