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Updated monthly

Microsoft Patch Tuesday
March 2024

Microsoft's March 2024 Patch Tuesday fixes 62 vulnerabilities across Windows, Azure and Apps - 2 rated Critical, 1 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped. No active exploitation this month, so lead with the 1 Critical remote code execution fix.

Released March 12, 2024, 10:00 PT1 publicly disclosed43 KB articles to deploy

March 2024 Patch Tuesday at a glance

62
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
2
Critical
3% of the release
0
Actively exploited
none this month
1
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
9.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2024-21334
43
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's March 2024 release document lists 180 entries. 98 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 20 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 62 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.

Patch today

Exploited in the wild

Confirmed attacks are already happening. Emergency change window.

No actively exploited vulnerabilities in this release.

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 180 entries actually come from

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

62 Microsoft products98 Azure Linux (Mariner)20 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 62 CVEs

March 2024 severity breakdown
Critical2
Important60
Moderate0
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

March 2024 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege25
Remote Code Execution18
Information Disclosure7
Denial of Service6
Security Feature Bypass3
Spoofing2
Tampering1

Most-affected components

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

Windows Kernel8Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5Windows ODBC Driver3Open Management Infrastructure2Role: Windows Hyper-V2Windows USB Print Driver2.NET1.NET Framework1Azure Data Studio1Azure SDK1Intel1Microsoft Authenticator1
Every patch

Browse all 180 entries

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

Showing 62 of 62
62 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the March 2024 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2024-28916Xbox Gaming Services Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP8.8DisclosedMore likelyXBox Crypto Graphic Services—
ImportantCVE-2024-21437Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-26170Windows Composite Image File System (CimFS) Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Composite Image File System5035845 +5
ImportantCVE-2024-26182Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Kernel5035845 +2
ImportantCVE-2024-29059.NET Framework Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.7.5More likely.NET Framework5033910 +15
ImportantCVE-2024-21433Windows Print Spooler Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyWindows Print Spooler Components5035845 +10
ImportantCVE-2024-26185Windows Compressed Folder Tampering VulnerabilityTampering6.5More likelyWindows Compressed Folder5035853
ImportantCVE-2024-26160Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyWindows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver5035853 +1
CriticalCVE-2024-21407Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.1—Role: Windows Hyper-V5035845 +10
CriticalCVE-2024-21408Windows Hyper-V Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS5.5—Role: Windows Hyper-V5035845 +8
ImportantCVE-2024-21334Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.8—Open Management Infrastructure—
ImportantCVE-2024-21400Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service Confidential Container Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP9.0—Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service—
ImportantCVE-2024-21411Skype for Consumer Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Skype for Consumer—
ImportantCVE-2024-21435Windows OLE Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Windows OLE5035853
ImportantCVE-2024-21440Microsoft ODBC Driver Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Windows ODBC Driver5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-21441Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-21444Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-21450Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-21451Microsoft ODBC Driver Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC ODBC Driver5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-26159Microsoft ODBC Driver Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Windows ODBC Driver5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-26161Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-26162Microsoft ODBC Driver Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Windows ODBC Driver5035845 +14
ImportantCVE-2024-26164Microsoft Django Backend for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft Django Backend for SQL Server—
ImportantCVE-2024-26165Visual Studio Code Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP8.8—Visual Studio Code—
ImportantCVE-2024-26166Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL5035845 +14
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 43 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 62 vulnerabilities in March 2024, across Windows, Azure, Apps and Developer Tools. 2 are rated Critical, 1 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 0 were already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 180 entries in total, but 98 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 20 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 20 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.