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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
November 2018

Microsoft's November 2018 Patch Tuesday fixes 64 vulnerabilities across Windows, Microsoft Office and Browser - 14 rated Critical, 4 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, one already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2018-8589 first.

Released November 13, 2018, 10:00 PT1 actively exploited4 publicly disclosed58 KB articles to deploy

November 2018 Patch Tuesday at a glance

64
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
14
Critical
22% of the release
1
Actively exploited
CVE-2018-8589
4
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
8.1
Highest CVSS
CVE-2018-8476
58
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's November 2018 release document lists 79 entries. 12 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 3 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 64 above is the real Patch Tuesday set. See the breakdown →

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 79 entries actually come from

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

64 Microsoft products12 Azure Linux (Mariner)3 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 64 CVEs

November 2018 severity breakdown
Critical14
Important46
Moderate2
Low1
Unrated1

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

November 2018 impact breakdown
Remote Code Execution28
Elevation of Privilege12
Information Disclosure8
Spoofing8
Security Feature Bypass3
Tampering2
Other2
Denial of Service1

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Office11Microsoft Scripting Engine10Microsoft Graphics Component7Microsoft Windows6Microsoft Dynamics5Microsoft Office SharePoint3Adobe Flash Player2Microsoft PowerShell2Windows Kernel2.NET Core1Azure1Internet Explorer1
Every patch

Browse all 79 entries

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

Showing 64 of 64
64 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the November 2018 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2018-8589Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8ExploitedWindows Kernel4467106 +3
ImportantCVE-2018-8584Windows ALPC Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8DisclosedMore likelyMicrosoft Windows4467680 +5
ImportantCVE-2018-8566BitLocker Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass4.6DisclosedWindows BitLocker4465659 +4
ModerateADV180029Inadvertently Disclosed Digital Certificates Could Allow SpoofingSpoofing-DisclosedWindows Certificates—
UnratedADV180028Guidance for configuring BitLocker to enforce software encryptionOther-DisclosedMicrosoft Windows—
CriticalCVE-2018-8476Windows Deployment Services TFTP Server Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.1More likelyMicrosoft Windows4467106 +10
CriticalCVE-2018-8544Windows VBScript Engine Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467106 +13
CriticalCVE-2018-8541Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467702 +1
CriticalCVE-2018-8542Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
CriticalCVE-2018-8543Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
CriticalCVE-2018-8551Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467686 +3
CriticalCVE-2018-8555Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
CriticalCVE-2018-8556Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
CriticalCVE-2018-8557Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
CriticalCVE-2018-8588Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4467680 +5
ImportantCVE-2018-8450Windows Search Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Windows Search Component4467106 +12
ImportantCVE-2018-8552Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4466536 +10
ImportantCVE-2018-8554DirectX Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4467702 +1
ImportantCVE-2018-8562Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4467106 +13
ImportantCVE-2018-8417Microsoft JScript Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass4.5More likelyMicrosoft JScript4467680 +5
ImportantCVE-2018-8408Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.3.3More likelyWindows Kernel4467106 +12
ImportantCVE-2018-8522Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office4461486 +2
ImportantCVE-2018-8573Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office4461485 +3
ImportantCVE-2018-8574Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office4461503
ImportantCVE-2018-8576Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office4461486 +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 58 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 64 vulnerabilities in November 2018, across Windows, Microsoft Office, Browser and Developer Tools. 14 are rated Critical, 4 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 1 was already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 79 entries in total, but 12 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 3 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 3 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.