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Microsoft Patch Tuesday
September 2018

Microsoft's September 2018 Patch Tuesday fixes 59 vulnerabilities across Windows, Browser and Microsoft Office - 16 rated Critical, 4 publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, one already exploited in the wild. Patch CVE-2018-8440 first.

Released September 11, 2018, 10:00 PT1 actively exploited4 publicly disclosed48 KB articles to deploy

September 2018 Patch Tuesday at a glance

59
Microsoft CVEs
excl. Edge & Azure Linux
16
Critical
27% of the release
1
Actively exploited
CVE-2018-8440
4
Publicly disclosed
known before the patch
8.8
Highest CVSS
CVE-2018-8475
48
KB articles
what you actually deploy

Why this number differs from other roundups. Microsoft's September 2018 release document lists 65 entries. 1 are Azure Linux (Mariner) OS package updates and 5 are republished Chromium fixes for Edge - neither is a Microsoft product vulnerability. The 59 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 65 entries actually come from

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

59 Microsoft products1 Azure Linux (Mariner)5 Edge (Chromium)

Severity

Microsoft channel only · 59 CVEs

September 2018 severity breakdown
Critical16
Important42
Moderate1
Low0

Impact type

What an attacker gains if it works

September 2018 impact breakdown
Remote Code Execution21
Information Disclosure18
Elevation of Privilege7
Denial of Service7
Security Feature Bypass5
Spoofing1

Most-affected components

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

Microsoft Scripting Engine11Microsoft Office7Microsoft Graphics Component6Windows Hyper-V6Windows Kernel6Microsoft Windows5Internet Explorer3Microsoft JET Database Engine2Windows SMB Server2Windows Subsystem for Linux2.NET Core1.NET Framework1
Every patch

Browse all 65 entries

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

Showing 59 of 59
59 Microsoft vulnerabilities in the September 2018 Patch Tuesday, sortable by severity, CVSS and exploit status.
TitleStatusKB
ImportantCVE-2018-8440Windows ALPC Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.8ExploitedDisclosedMicrosoft Windows4457128 +12
CriticalCVE-2018-8475Windows Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8DisclosedMore likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4457128 +12
CriticalCVE-2018-8457Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5DisclosedMore likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +8
ImportantCVE-2018-8409System.IO.Pipelines Denial of ServiceDoS-Disclosed.NET Core—
CriticalCVE-2018-8420MS XML Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyMicrosoft XML Core Services4457128 +12
CriticalCVE-2018-8447Internet Explorer Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyInternet Explorer4457128 +9
CriticalCVE-2018-8461Internet Explorer Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE7.5More likelyInternet Explorer4457128 +1
CriticalCVE-2018-8367Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-8391Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine—
CriticalCVE-2018-8456Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +2
CriticalCVE-2018-8459Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128
CriticalCVE-2018-8465Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +3
CriticalCVE-2018-8466Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +4
CriticalCVE-2018-8467Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +4
ImportantCVE-2018-8410Windows Registry Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Windows4457128 +10
ImportantCVE-2018-8462DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP7.0More likelyMicrosoft Graphics Component4457128 +4
ImportantCVE-2018-8449Device Guard Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass5.3More likelyDevice Guard4457128 +4
ImportantCVE-2018-8442Windows Kernel Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.4.7More likelyWindows Kernel4457128 +12
ImportantCVE-2018-8452Scripting Engine Information Disclosure VulnerabilityInfo Disc.4.3More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +7
ImportantCVE-2018-8468Windows Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityEoP4.3More likelyWindows Shell4457128 +12
ImportantCVE-2018-8470Internet Explorer Security Feature Bypass VulnerabilityBypass4.3More likelyInternet Explorer4457128 +7
ImportantCVE-2018-8354Scripting Engine Memory Corruption VulnerabilityRCE4.2More likelyMicrosoft Scripting Engine4457128 +4
ImportantCVE-2018-8331Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office—
ImportantCVE-2018-8430Word PDF Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE-More likelyMicrosoft Office4032246 +1
CriticalCVE-2018-8332Win32k Graphics Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityRCE8.8—Microsoft Graphics Component4457128 +12
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 48 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 59 vulnerabilities in September 2018, across Windows, Browser, Microsoft Office and Developer Tools. 16 are rated Critical, 4 were publicly disclosed before the patch shipped, and 1 was already being exploited. Note that Microsoft's release document lists 65 entries in total, but 1 of those are Azure Linux package updates and 5 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 5 Edge entries alongside Microsoft product fixes would inflate the headline number and imply work for your Windows Update rings that does not exist.