February Patch Tuesday delivers 57 packages – Sophos Information

Microsoft on Tuesday launched 57 patches touching 13 product households. Two of the addressed points are thought-about by Microsoft to be of Important severity, and 13 have a CVSS base rating of 8.0 or increased. Two, each affecting Home windows, are underneath lively exploit within the wild.

At patch time, two of the addressed Home windows points (CVE-2025-21391, CVE-2025-21418) are detected to be underneath lively exploit within the wild, with 17 further CVEs extra prone to be exploited within the subsequent 30 days by the corporate’s estimation. 4 of this month’s points are amenable to detection by Sophos protections, and we embrace info on these in a desk beneath.

Along with these patches, the discharge contains advisory info on Servicing Stack Updates, in addition to info on the month’s 10 Edge patches (there may be additionally, for the second month in a row, an Web Explorer patch, as we’ll focus on beneath) and one Dynamics 365 situation lined within the launch however already mitigated by Microsoft.

We’re as all the time together with on the finish of this publish further appendices itemizing all Microsoft’s patches, sorted by severity, by predicted exploitability, and by product household; an appendix masking the advisory-style updates; and a breakout of the patches affecting the assorted Home windows Server platforms nonetheless in help. This month, we’re including additional info to Appendix B, recapping CVSS Base scores for essentially the most extremely scored vulnerabilities.

By the numbers

• Whole CVEs: 57
• Publicly disclosed: 2
• Exploit detected: 2
• Severity
  • Important: 2
  • Essential: 55
• Affect
  • Distant Code Execution: 23
  • Elevation of Privilege: 19
  • Denial of Service: 9
  • Safety Characteristic Bypass: 2
  • Spoofing: 2
  • Info Disclosure: 1
  • Tampering: 1
• CVSS base rating 9.0 or larger: 1
• CVSS base rating 8.0 or larger: 12

Determine 1: Distant code execution accounts for slightly below half of the February CVE haul, and for each of its Important-severity points

Merchandise

• Home windows: 37
• 365: 8
• Workplace: 8
• Excel: 6
• Visible Studio: 4
• Azure: 2
• CBL Mariner: 1
• PC: 1
• Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac: 1
• Outlook: 1
• PC Supervisor: 1
• SharePoint: 1
• Floor: 1

As is our customized for this listing, CVEs that apply to a couple of product household are counted as soon as for every household they have an effect on.

Determine 2: All 37 of February’s Home windows patches apply to the server-side OS, although most additionally apply to the consumer aspect. As for the remaining, one in every of this month’s curiosities is which might be are 4 patches for Visible Studio – however none for .NET

Notable February updates

Along with the problems mentioned above, a wide range of particular gadgets benefit consideration.

CVE-2025-21391 — Home windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

One of many two points already recognized to be underneath exploit within the wild, this situation would permit an attacker to delete focused information on the system; no consumer interplay is required.

CVE-2025-21198 – Microsoft Excessive Efficiency Compute (HPC) Pack Linux Compute Node Distant Code Execution Vulnerability

Microsoft characterizes this CVSS 9.0 situation as Essential in severity and believes it’s much less prone to be exploited within the subsequent 30 days. To take advantage of this situation, an attacker would want entry to the community connecting the focused clusters and nodes, and would ship a malicious HTTPS request to the focused head node or Linux compute node

CVE-2025-21381, CVE-2025-21386, CVE-2025-21387, CVE-2025-21390, CVE-2025-21394 – all Microsoft Excel Distant Code Execution Vulnerability

5 of the six Excel vulnerabilities this month (that are additionally 5 of the eight 365 and Workplace vulnerabilities) embrace Preview Pane as a possible vector. All are Essential-severity points with a CVSS Base rating of seven.8.

CVE-2025-21194 — Microsoft Floor Safety Characteristic Bypass Vulnerability

It is a robust bug to take advantage of – it requires a good quantity of preparation, attacker entry to a restricted community, and a reboot on the consumer’s half. The outstanding factor about this bug, nonetheless, is that it will depend on the {hardware} – particularly, a number of variations of Microsoft’s Floor platform, and extra particularly VMs inside a UEFI host machine. A profitable attacker may bypass the UEFI, which may result in compromise of the hypervisor and the safe kernel.

CVE-2025-21377 — NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Web Explorer once more? Sure, and that’s not the one throwback facet to this patch. The vulnerability, which discloses the consumer’s NTLMv2 hash, impacts the MSHTML, EdgeHTML, and scripting platforms nonetheless lurking beneath the floor of varied functions. Microsoft believes this situation is amongst these extra prone to be exploited within the wild within the subsequent 30 days. Discovery of this bug was apparently a multinational effort, with credit score given to researchers at Cathay Pacific in addition to safety companies Securify BV and ACROS Safety. The latter could ring bells with tech folks skilled sufficient to recollect one in every of their early discoveries – one of many knot of vulnerabilities that composed Stuxnet.

Determine 3: With Tampering becoming a member of the board with a single vulnerability this month, all the same old classes are already represented on the 2025 cumulative chart

Sophos protections

As you’ll be able to each month, in the event you don’t wish to wait to your system to drag down Microsoft’s updates itself, you’ll be able to obtain them manually from the Home windows Replace Catalog web site. Run the winver.exe software to find out which construct of Home windows 10 or 11 you’re operating, then obtain the Cumulative Replace package deal to your particular system’s structure and construct quantity.

Appendix A: Vulnerability Affect and Severity

It is a listing of February patches sorted by impression, then sub-sorted by severity. Every listing is additional organized by CVE.

Distant Code Execution (23 CVEs)

Elevation of Privilege (19 CVEs)

Denial of Service (9 CVEs)

Safety Characteristic Bypass (2 CVEs)

Spoofing (2 CVEs)

Info Disclosure (1 CVE)

Tampering (1 CVE)

Appendix B: Exploitability and CVSS

It is a listing of the February CVEs judged by Microsoft to be both underneath exploitation within the wild or extra prone to be exploited within the wild throughout the first 30 days post-release. The listing is additional organized by CVE.

It is a listing of February CVEs with a Microsoft-assessed CVSS Base rating of 8.0 or increased. They’re organized by rating and additional sorted by CVE. For extra info on how CVSS works, please see our sequence on patch prioritization schema.

Appendix C: Merchandise Affected

It is a listing of February’s patches sorted by product household, then sub-sorted by severity. Every listing is additional organized by CVE. Patches which might be shared amongst a number of product households are listed a number of instances, as soon as for every product household. Points affecting Home windows Server are additional sorted in Appendix E.

Home windows (37 CVEs)

365 (8 CVEs)

Workplace (8 CVEs)

Excel (6 CVEs)

Visible Studio (4 CVEs)

Azure (2 CVEs)

CBL Mariner (1 CVE)

HPC (1 CVE)

Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac (1 CVE)

Outlook (1 CVE)

PC Supervisor (1 CVE)

SharePoint (1 CVE)

Floor (1 CVE)

Appendix D: Advisories and Different Merchandise

It is a listing of advisories and data on different related CVEs within the February launch. The problems addressed in these CVEs have already been mitigated by Microsoft, however have been listed within the launch within the pursuits of transparency.

Microsoft info:

There are not any Adobe advisories on this month’s launch.

Appendix E: Affected Home windows Server variations

It is a desk of CVEs within the February launch affecting 9 Home windows Server variations, 2008 by way of 2025. The desk differentiates amongst main variations of the platform however doesn’t go into deeper element (eg., Server Core). Important-severity points are marked in pink; an “x” signifies that the CVE doesn’t apply to that model. Directors are inspired to make use of this appendix as a place to begin to establish their particular publicity, as every reader’s scenario, particularly because it issues merchandise out of mainstream help, will differ. For particular Data Base numbers, please seek the advice of Microsoft.