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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
May 2023

Microsoft's May 2023 Patch Tuesday fixes 38 vulnerabilities across Windows, Microsoft Office and Developer Tools - 6 rated Critical, 2 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, 2 already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2023-24932 first.

Released May 9, 2023, 10:00 PT2 actively exploited2 publicly disclosed41 KB articles to deploy

May 2023 Patch Tuesday at a glance

38
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
6
Critical
16% of the release
2
Actively exploited
CVE-2023-24932
2
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
9.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2023-24941
41
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's May 2023 release document lists 165 entries. 110 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 17 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 38 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 165 entries actually come from

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

38 Microsoft products110 Azure Linux (Mariner)17 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 38 CVEs

May 2023 severity breakdown
Critical6
Important32
Moderate0
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

May 2023 impact breakdown
Remote Code Execution12
Elevation of Privilege8
Information Disclosure7
Denial of Service5
Security Feature Bypass4
Spoofing2

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Bluetooth Driver3Microsoft Office SharePoint3Microsoft Windows Codecs Library2Windows NFS Portmapper2Windows PGM2Windows Secure Boot2Windows Win32K2Microsoft Graphics Component1Microsoft Office1Microsoft Office Access1Microsoft Office Excel1Microsoft Office Word1
Every patch

Browse all 165 entries

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

Showing 38 of 38
38 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the May 2023 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2023-24932Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass6.7ExploitedDisclosedWindows Secure Boot5026361 +16
ImportantCVE-2023-29336Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8ExploitedWindows Win32K5026363 +9
CriticalCVE-2023-29325Windows OLE Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.1DisclosedMore likelyWindows OLE5026361 +15
CriticalCVE-2023-24941Windows Network File System Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.8More likelyWindows Network File System5026362 +7
CriticalCVE-2023-24955Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.2More likelyMicrosoft Office SharePoint5002389 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-24902Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Win32K5026368 +1
ImportantCVE-2023-24949Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Kernel5026361 +5
ImportantCVE-2023-24950Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing VulnerabilitySpoofing6.5More likelyMicrosoft Office SharePoint5002389 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-24954Microsoft SharePoint Server Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.6.5More likelyMicrosoft Office SharePoint5002389 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-29324Windows MSHTML Platform Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass6.5More likelyWindows MSHTML Platform5026361 +16
CriticalCVE-2023-24943Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.8—Windows PGM5026361 +15
CriticalCVE-2023-24903Windows Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.1—Windows Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)5026361 +15
CriticalCVE-2023-28283Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.1—Windows LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol5026361 +15
ImportantCVE-2023-24947Windows Bluetooth Driver Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft Bluetooth Driver5026361 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-24905Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Remote Desktop Client5026361 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-24946Windows Backup Service Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8—Windows Backup Engine5026361 +7
ImportantCVE-2023-24953Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Office Excel5002372 +2
ImportantCVE-2023-29340AV1 Video Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
ImportantCVE-2023-29341AV1 Video Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
ImportantCVE-2023-29343SysInternals Sysmon for Windows Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8—SysInternals—
ImportantCVE-2023-29344Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Office—
ImportantCVE-2023-24898Windows SMB Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS7.5—Windows SMB5026456
ImportantCVE-2023-24901Windows NFS Portmapper Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.7.5—Windows NFS Portmapper5026361 +11
ImportantCVE-2023-24939Server for NFS Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS7.5—Windows NFS Portmapper5026361 +11
ImportantCVE-2023-24940Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Denial of Service VulnerabilityDoS7.5—Windows PGM5026361 +15
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 41 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 38 vulnerabilities in May 2023, across Windows, Microsoft Office and Developer Tools. 6 are rated Critical, 2 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 2 were already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 165 entries in total, but 110 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 17 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 17 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.