Trinetri logo
Updated monthly

Microsoft Patch Tuesday
August 2020

Microsoft's August 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 119 vulnerabilities across Windows, Microsoft Office and Browser - 17 rated Critical, 2 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, 2 already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2020-1464 first.

Released August 11, 2020, 10:00 PT2 actively exploited2 publicly disclosed76 KB articles to deploy

August 2020 Patch Tuesday at a glance

119
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
17
Critical
14% of the release
2
Actively exploited
CVE-2020-1464
2
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
10.0
Highest CVSS
CVE-2020-1472
76
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's August 2020 release document lists 325 entries. 204 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 2 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 119 above is the real Patch Tuesday set. See the breakdown →

Priority order

Patch these first

Ranked by exploitation reality, not score alone. This month's exploited flaw is rated Important - a severity-sorted list would bury it.

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 325 entries actually come from

Most roundups quote a single number. These are three unrelated release streams.

119 Microsoft products204 Azure Linux (Mariner)2 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 119 CVEs

August 2020 severity breakdown
Critical17
Important102
Moderate0
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

August 2020 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege61
Remote Code Execution32
Information Disclosure16
Spoofing7
Denial of Service3

Most-affected components

Where this month’s fixes concentrate - filter by any of them in the table below

Microsoft Windows50Microsoft Office14Microsoft Office SharePoint6Microsoft Graphics Component5Windows Media5Microsoft JET Database Engine4Microsoft Scripting Engine3Microsoft Windows Codecs Library3Windows AI3Windows Kernel3.NET Framework2Microsoft Dynamics2
Every patch

Browse all 325 entries

Sorted by risk by default: exploited first, then publicly disclosed, then severity, then CVSS. Search by CVE, title, component or KB number.

Showing 119 of 119
119 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the August 2020 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2020-1464Windows Spoofing VulnerabilitySpoofing5.3ExploitedDisclosedMicrosoft Windows4565349 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1380Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5ExploitedMicrosoft Scripting Engine4565349 +10
ImportantCVE-2020-1597ASP.NET Core Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS-DisclosedASP.NET—
CriticalCVE-2020-1472Netlogon Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP10.0More likelyWindows Netlogon4565351 +10
CriticalCVE-2020-1567MSHTML Engine Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyInternet Explorer4565349 +11
CriticalCVE-2020-1570Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4565349 +11
ImportantCVE-2020-1480Windows GDI Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4565349 +4
ImportantCVE-2020-1529Windows GDI Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4565349 +14
ImportantCVE-2020-1584Windows dnsrslvr.dll Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4565349 +12
ImportantCVE-2020-1587Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4565349 +14
ImportantCVE-2020-1578Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Kernel4565349 +3
ImportantCVE-2020-1566Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP-More likelyMicrosoft Windows4565349 +6
CriticalCVE-2020-1554Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE8.0—Windows Media4565349 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1379Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Windows Media4565349 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1477Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Windows Media Player4565349 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1492Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Video Control4565349 +8
CriticalCVE-2020-1525Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Windows Media4565349 +6
CriticalCVE-2020-1339Windows Media Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.3—Windows Media4565349 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1560Microsoft Windows Codecs Library Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.3—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-1574Microsoft Windows Codecs Library Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.3—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-1046.NET Framework Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-—.NET Framework4569745 +14
CriticalCVE-2020-1182Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (on-premises) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-—Microsoft Dynamics—
CriticalCVE-2020-1483Microsoft Outlook Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE-—Microsoft Office4484475 +2
CriticalCVE-2020-1555Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE-—Microsoft Scripting Engine4565349 +4
ImportantCVE-2020-1509Local Security Authority Subsystem Service Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP8.8—Microsoft Windows4565349 +10
Your move

What your IT team should do

The same five steps every month, in the order that reduces risk fastest.

Test the known-issue candidates

Check the Windows release health dashboard before promoting past ring 1, and have the rollback path written down before you need it. Kernel, networking and authentication fixes are the ones that historically break things.

12 Patch Management Best Practices for 2026 →

Verify installed state, then evidence it

Confirm the patch is actually present on each endpoint rather than trusting that "deployment succeeded". Keep the resulting report - it is the artefact auditors ask for, and reconstructing it later is far more work than capturing it now.

Patch Management: The Complete Guide →

Trinetri does steps two through five automatically - detecting the 76 KB articles across every endpoint, staging them in rings, verifying installed state and producing the compliance evidence. See patch management →

Archive

Previous Patch Tuesdays

Every month Microsoft has published back to January 2016, each with the same breakdown and the full CVE list.

Older months104 releases, October 2024 – January 2016
Stop the sprawl. Eliminate the guesswork.

Ready to See Autonomous Endpoint Management in Action?

Experience how Trinetri transforms endpoint chaos into clarity. Try the 30 minute demo session, our experts will walk you through how AI-powered automation, real-time visibility, and unified control can secure your entire hybrid environment, without the overhead.

Patch Tuesday FAQ

Patch Tuesday falls on the second Tuesday of every month, with updates going live at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. Microsoft introduced the practice in October 2003, following the Blaster worm, to cut distribution costs and give administrators a predictable cadence instead of patches arriving at random. The 10:00 a.m. timing is deliberate: it leaves a full working week to remediate before the weekend. Internally Microsoft calls it the "B" release; optional "C" and "D" preview releases follow later in the month. The next Patch Tuesday is November 10, 2026.

Microsoft fixed 119 vulnerabilities in August 2020, across Windows, Microsoft Office, Browser and Developer Tools. 17 are rated Critical, 2 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 2 were already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 325 entries in total, but 204 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 2 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge, which is why other sources sometimes quote a much larger number.

Exploit Wednesday is the day after Patch Tuesday. Attackers compare the newly released patches against the previous version to locate the flaw each one fixes, then build working exploits from that difference - often within 24 to 48 hours. It is the reason the deployment window matters as much as the patch itself: every hour a Critical remote code execution fix sits undeployed is an hour of measurable exposure.

A workable target for most organisations: actively exploited vulnerabilities within 24 hours, publicly disclosed ones within 72 hours, remaining Critical fixes within seven days, and everything else within the month. CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue sets binding deadlines for US federal agencies and is a reasonable benchmark for everyone else. Stage the rollout in rings rather than deploying everywhere at once, so a regression is caught on a pilot group instead of in production.

An out-of-band update is a patch released outside the monthly cycle because the risk will not wait for the next Patch Tuesday. Microsoft issues them for actively exploited flaws with no mitigation - most famously during the WannaCry outbreak in 2017, when it took the unusual step of patching versions of Windows that were already out of support.

Yes. Adobe aligned its releases with Patch Tuesday in November 2012, and both SAP's Security Patch Day and Oracle's quarterly Critical Patch Updates are coordinated to the same week. Part of the reason is defensive: staggered releases let attackers reverse-engineer one vendor's patch to find the same underlying flaw in another's still-unpatched product. For IT teams it means the second Tuesday is rarely just a Microsoft problem.

Edge is built on Chromium, so most of its security fixes originate with the Chromium project and are republished by Microsoft under their own CVE identifiers. They ship on Chromium's cadence rather than the Patch Tuesday cycle, and they are delivered by Edge's own updater rather than Windows Update. Counting the 2 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.