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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
February 2020

Microsoft's February 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 100 vulnerabilities across Windows, Browser and Microsoft Office - 13 rated Critical, 4 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, one already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2020-0674 first.

Released February 11, 2020, 10:00 PT1 actively exploited4 publicly disclosed40 KB articles to deploy

February 2020 Patch Tuesday at a glance

100
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
13
Critical
13% of the release
1
Actively exploited
CVE-2020-0674
4
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
8.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2020-0738
40
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's February 2020 release document lists 123 entries. 21 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 2 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 100 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 Critical - a severity-sorted list would bury it.

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 123 entries actually come from

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

100 Microsoft products21 Azure Linux (Mariner)2 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 100 CVEs

February 2020 severity breakdown
Critical13
Important87
Moderate0
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

February 2020 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege56
Remote Code Execution18
Information Disclosure16
Spoofing3
Denial of Service3
Security Feature Bypass3
Tampering1

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Windows39Windows Kernel12Microsoft Graphics Component7Microsoft Scripting Engine5Windows Shell5Microsoft Exchange Server3Microsoft Office3Windows COM3Windows Hyper-V3Windows Installer3Internet Explorer2Microsoft Office SharePoint2
Every patch

Browse all 123 entries

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

Showing 100 of 100
100 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the February 2020 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
CriticalCVE-2020-0674Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5ExploitedDisclosedInternet Explorer4532691 +10
ImportantCVE-2020-0689Microsoft Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass8.2DisclosedWindows Secure Boot4535680 +1
ImportantCVE-2020-0683Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0DisclosedWindows Installer4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0686Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0DisclosedWindows Installer4532691 +13
CriticalCVE-2020-0673Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyInternet Explorer4532691 +10
CriticalCVE-2020-0681Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Windows4532691 +13
CriticalCVE-2020-0734Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyRemote Desktop Client4532691 +11
CriticalCVE-2020-0817Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyRemote Desktop Client4532691 +9
ImportantCVE-2020-0657Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0745Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0715Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0720Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0721Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0722Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0723Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0725Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0726Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0731Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0658Windows Common Log File System Driver Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyMicrosoft Windows4532691 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-0688Microsoft Exchange Validation Key Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Exchange Server4536987 +2
ImportantCVE-2020-0692Microsoft Exchange Server Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP-More likelyMicrosoft Exchange Server4536987 +1
CriticalCVE-2020-0738Media Foundation Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Windows Media4532691 +11
CriticalCVE-2020-0662Internet Connection Sharing Service Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.6—Windows Hyper-V4532691 +13
CriticalCVE-2020-0729LNK Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5—Windows Shell4532691 +13
CriticalCVE-2020-0710Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2—Microsoft Scripting Engine4532691 +4
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 40 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
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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 100 vulnerabilities in February 2020, across Windows, Browser, Microsoft Office and Device. 13 are rated Critical, 4 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 1 was already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 123 entries in total, but 21 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.