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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
November 2020

Microsoft's November 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 112 vulnerabilities across Windows, Azure and Microsoft Office - 17 rated Critical, 1 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, one already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2020-17087 first.

Released November 10, 2020, 10:00 PT1 actively exploited1 publicly disclosed58 KB articles to deploy

November 2020 Patch Tuesday at a glance

112
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
17
Critical
15% of the release
1
Actively exploited
CVE-2020-17087
1
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
9.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2020-17051
58
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's November 2020 release document lists 163 entries. 51 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 0 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 112 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.

Patch this week

Publicly disclosed

Details are already public. Working exploits typically follow within days.

Nothing was disclosed before the patch shipped.

The numbers

What’s in this release

Where the 163 entries actually come from

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

112 Microsoft products51 Azure Linux (Mariner)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 112 CVEs

November 2020 severity breakdown
Critical17
Important93
Moderate0
Low2

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

November 2020 impact breakdown
Elevation of Privilege37
Remote Code Execution35
Information Disclosure19
Spoofing10
Security Feature Bypass5
Denial of Service4
Tampering2

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Windows34Azure Sphere15Microsoft Windows Codecs Library14Microsoft Office8Windows Update Stack7Microsoft Office SharePoint6Microsoft Graphics Component5Microsoft Dynamics4Microsoft Scripting Engine4Microsoft Exchange Server3Visual Studio2Windows Kernel2
Every patch

Browse all 163 entries

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

Showing 112 of 112
112 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the November 2020 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2020-17087Windows Kernel Local Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8ExploitedDisclosedWindows Kernel4586781 +13
CriticalCVE-2020-17051Windows Network File System Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE9.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4586781 +11
CriticalCVE-2020-17052Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4586768 +9
CriticalCVE-2020-17053Internet Explorer Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4586781 +3
ImportantCVE-2020-17061Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8More likelyMicrosoft Office SharePoint4486714 +3
ImportantCVE-2020-17010Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Windows4586781 +1
ImportantCVE-2020-17038Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4586781 +11
ImportantCVE-2020-17088Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8More likelyWindows Common Log File System Driver4586781 +13
ImportantCVE-2020-16998DirectX Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4586781 +5
ImportantCVE-2020-17057Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Windows4586781 +4
ImportantCVE-2020-17056Windows Network File System Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.5.5More likelyMicrosoft Windows4586781 +9
CriticalCVE-2020-17042Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft Windows4586781 +15
CriticalCVE-2020-17078Raw Image Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17079Raw Image Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17082Raw Image Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17101HEIF Image Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17105AV1 Video Extension Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17106HEVC Video Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17107HEVC Video Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17108HEVC Video Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17109HEVC Video Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17110HEVC Video Extensions Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.8—Microsoft Windows Codecs Library—
CriticalCVE-2020-17058Microsoft Browser Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5—Microsoft Browsers4586781 +5
CriticalCVE-2020-16988Azure Sphere Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP6.9—Azure Sphere—
CriticalCVE-2020-17048Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2—Microsoft Scripting Engine4586781 +4
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 112 vulnerabilities in November 2020, across Windows, Azure, Microsoft Office and Browser. 17 are rated Critical, 1 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 1 was already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 163 entries in total, but 51 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 0 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 0 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.