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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
March 2018

Microsoft's March 2018 Patch Tuesday fixes 75 vulnerabilities across Windows, Browser and Microsoft Office - 15 rated Critical, 3 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped. No active exploitation this month, so lead with the 13 Critical remote code execution fixes.

Released March 13, 2018, 10:00 PT3 publicly disclosed61 KB articles to deploy

March 2018 Patch Tuesday at a glance

75
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
15
Critical
20% of the release
0
Actively exploited
none this month
3
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
7.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2018-1038
61
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's March 2018 release document lists 83 entries. 7 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 1 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 75 above is the real Patch Tuesday set. See the breakdown →

Priority order

Patch these first

Ranked by exploitation reality, not score alone. Nothing is under active attack this month, so the Critical remote-code-execution fixes lead.

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 83 entries actually come from

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

75 Microsoft products7 Azure Linux (Mariner)1 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 75 CVEs

March 2018 severity breakdown
Critical15
Important59
Moderate0
Low1

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

March 2018 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege27
Information Disclosure23
Remote Code Execution19
Denial of Service3
Security Feature Bypass3

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Office17Microsoft Scripting Engine16Windows Kernel15Microsoft Windows4Microsoft Exchange Server3Microsoft Graphics Component3Windows Desktop Bridge3Internet Explorer2Microsoft Browsers2Windows Hyper-V2.NET Core1Adobe Flash Player1
Every patch

Browse all 83 entries

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

Showing 75 of 75
75 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the March 2018 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2018-0808ASP.NET Core Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS-DisclosedASP.NET—
ImportantCVE-2018-0940Microsoft Exchange Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP-DisclosedMicrosoft Exchange Server4073392 +1
ImportantCVE-2018-1038Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8DisclosedWindows Kernel4100480
CriticalCVE-2018-0889Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +9
CriticalCVE-2018-0932Microsoft Browser Memory Corruption VulnerabilityInfo Disc.4.3More likelyMicrosoft Browsers4088776 +8
CriticalCVE-2018-0939Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityInfo Disc.4.3More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +1
CriticalCVE-2018-0872Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-0874Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-0893Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +3
CriticalCVE-2018-0925Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine—
CriticalCVE-2018-0930Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776
CriticalCVE-2018-0931Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-0933Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-0934Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-0936Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776
CriticalCVE-2018-0937Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +1
ImportantCVE-2018-0891Scripting Engine Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +9
ImportantCVE-2018-0935Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4088776 +9
ImportantCVE-2018-0817Windows GDI Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4088776 +11
ImportantCVE-2018-0977Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Kernel4088776 +4
ImportantCVE-2018-0983Windows Storage Services Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Windows4088776 +3
ImportantCVE-2018-0811Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Kernel4088776 +11
ImportantCVE-2018-0813Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Kernel4088776 +11
ImportantCVE-2018-0814Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Kernel4088776 +11
ImportantCVE-2018-0926Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Kernel4088776 +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 61 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 75 vulnerabilities in March 2018, across Windows, Browser, Microsoft Office and Developer Tools. 15 are rated Critical, 3 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 0 were already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 83 entries in total, but 7 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 1 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 1 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.