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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
January 2022

Microsoft's January 2022 Patch Tuesday fixes 98 vulnerabilities across Windows, Microsoft Office and Server Software - 9 rated Critical, 7 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, 2 already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2013-3900 first.

Released January 11, 2022, 10:00 PT2 actively exploited7 publicly disclosed55 KB articles to deploy

January 2022 Patch Tuesday at a glance

98
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
9
Critical
9% of the release
2
Actively exploited
CVE-2013-3900
7
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
9.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2022-21907
55
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's January 2022 release document lists 359 entries. 209 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 52 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 98 above is the real Patch Tuesday set. See the breakdown →

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 359 entries actually come from

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

98 Microsoft products209 Azure Linux (Mariner)52 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 98 CVEs

January 2022 severity breakdown
Critical9
Important88
Moderate1
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

January 2022 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege41
Remote Code Execution29
Security Feature Bypass10
Denial of Service9
Information Disclosure6
Spoofing3

Most-affected components

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

Windows Resilient File System (ReFS)8Windows IKE Extension6Microsoft Graphics Component4Role: Windows Hyper-V4Microsoft Exchange Server3Windows DirectX3Windows DWM Core Library3Windows RDP3Windows Win32K3Microsoft Dynamics2Windows Common Log File System Driver2Windows Defender2
Every patch

Browse all 359 entries

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

Showing 98 of 98
98 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the January 2022 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ModerateCVE-2013-3900WinVerifyTrust Signature Validation VulnerabilityBypass5.5ExploitedDisclosedWinVerifyTrust Signature Verification—
ImportantCVE-2022-21882Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0ExploitedWindows Win32K5009543 +4
ImportantCVE-2022-21919Windows User Profile Service Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0DisclosedMore likelyWindows User Profile Service5009543 +14
CriticalCVE-2021-22947Open Source Curl Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-DisclosedOpen Source Software5009543 +4
ImportantCVE-2022-21836Windows Certificate Spoofing VulnerabilitySpoofing7.8DisclosedWindows Certificates5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21874Windows Security Center API Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8DisclosedWindows Security Center5009543 +6
ImportantCVE-2022-21839Windows Event Tracing Discretionary Access Control List Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS6.1DisclosedWindows Event Tracing5009557
ImportantCVE-2021-36976Libarchive Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-DisclosedWindows Libarchive5009543 +4
CriticalCVE-2022-21907HTTP Protocol Stack Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.8More likelyWindows HTTP Protocol Stack5009543 +3
CriticalCVE-2022-21846Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.0More likelyMicrosoft Exchange Server5008631
ImportantCVE-2022-21855Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.0More likelyMicrosoft Exchange Server5008631
ImportantCVE-2022-21969Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.0More likelyMicrosoft Exchange Server5008631
ImportantCVE-2022-21885Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Remote Access Connection Manager5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21897Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Common Log File System Driver5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21908Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Installer5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21914Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Remote Access Connection Manager5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21916Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Common Log File System Driver5009543 +14
ImportantCVE-2022-21881Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel5009543 +8
ImportantCVE-2022-21887Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Win32K5009566
ImportantCVE-2022-21903Windows GDI Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component5009545 +12
CriticalCVE-2022-21840Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft Office4462205 +19
CriticalCVE-2022-21857Active Directory Domain Services Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP8.8—Windows Active Directory5009543 +14
CriticalCVE-2022-21833Virtual Machine IDE Drive Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8—Windows Virtual Machine IDE Drive5009543 +14
CriticalCVE-2022-21898DirectX Graphics Kernel Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Windows DirectX5009543 +3
CriticalCVE-2022-21912DirectX Graphics Kernel Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Windows DirectX5009543 +2
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 55 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 98 vulnerabilities in January 2022, across Windows, Microsoft Office, Server Software and Developer Tools. 9 are rated Critical, 7 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 2 were already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 359 entries in total, but 209 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 52 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 52 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.