Microsoft’s August 2025 Patch Tuesday, released on August 12, addresses a total of 64 CVEs across its products with 15 marked critical and 2 actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities demanding urgent attention.
The two high-profile zero-days are CVE-2025-29015, a remote code execution flaw in Windows MSHTML affecting any app hosting this engine (like legacy IE mode in Edge), and CVE-2025-29912, a privilege escalation vulnerability in Exchange Server 2016 and 2019. These have already been exploited in real-world phishing campaigns and public proof-of-concept exploits emerged swiftly after patch release.
Other critical fixes include a cryptographic certificate spoofing vulnerability in CryptoAPI (CVE-2025-27930), another Print Spooler remote code execution flaw continuing the infamous PrintNightmare saga (CVE-2025-28445), and elevation of privilege in the Azure SDK for .NET (CVE-2025-28777).
Important updates also address multiple memory corruption bugs in Office 365 apps, 8 security holes in Chromium-based Edge (including RCE in the V8 engine), Hyper-V denial-of-service issues, and cross-site scripting chains in SharePoint Server.
The update impacts a wide range of platforms: from Windows 10 and 11 versions to Windows Server (2016–2022), Exchange Servers, Microsoft Office versions, and Azure components.
Despite Microsoft telemetry showing 12% of enterprises patch critical updates within 24 hours and 45% by Day 7, delayed patching remains a top risk factor, strongly linked to ransomware breaches. Experts recommend prioritizing zero-day patches immediately, enabling automated updates, testing quickly, auditing privileges, and complementing patching with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and network segmentation.
The pace of zero-day disclosures is rising—up 30% over last year—highlighting the need for agility and risk-based patch management strategies integrating asset criticality and threat intelligence.
In summary, August 2025’s Patch Tuesday is a strong reminder: stay vigilant, patch promptly, and deploy layered defenses to stay ahead of increasingly aggressive adversaries.
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