Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday: 400+ Bugs Fixed, One Zero-Day Already Under Attack

Microsoft released patches for over 400 CVEs in this Patch Tuesday, including multiple critical unauthenticated remote code execution flaws and an actively exploited afd.sys zero-day (CVE-2026-68820) used by North Korean attackers in Operation Dream Job; another risky privilege-escalation flaw (CVE-2026-62832) was publicly disclosed pre-patch, and a researcher-published exploit called "ShieldBreak" bypasses a July patch to elevate local privileges via Windows Defender, creating immediate prioritization and operational testing challenges for defenders.