The deluge of patches in April dried up substantially in May, as Microsoft released 59 patches across 11 product families. Among these patches, Windows received the majority with 48, while the rest were spread among .NET, 365 Apps for Enterprise, Azure, Bing Search for iOS, Dynamics 365, Intune, Office, Power BI, SharePoint, and Visual Studio. Notably, only one critical-severity issue affecting SharePoint was identified in this month’s patch release.

At the time of the patch release, two important-severity faults affecting Windows were known to be actively exploited in the wild. Additionally, ten more important-severity vulnerabilities in Windows and SharePoint were identified by Microsoft as more likely to be exploited in the next 30 days. Sophos protections are able to detect these issues, with information on them included in a table.

Apart from the Microsoft patches, the release also included advisory information on six patches related to the Edge browser, two related to Visual Studio managed by GitHub, and four from Adobe. Advisory information was not included in the CVE counts and graphics but was available in an appendix at the end of the article.

Overall, the total number of Microsoft CVEs in May was 59, with the majority of them falling under the important severity category. The impact of these vulnerabilities varied, with remote code execution being the most common, followed by elevation of privilege, information disclosure, spoofing, denial of service, security feature bypass, and tampering.

Windows received the bulk of the patches in May, with 48 CVEs identified. Other product families impacted by the patches include Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Visual Studio, .NET, 365 Apps for Enterprise, Azure, Bing Search for iOS, Intune, Office, and Power BI.

Several notable updates and themes emerged in May, including the identification of issues under exploit in the wild, such as the Chromium bug affecting Visuals and security feature bypass vulnerabilities in Windows MSHTML Platform and Mark of the Web. Microsoft highlighted the critical-severity vulnerability in SharePoint and released patches to address it.

Sophos developed Intercept X/Endpoint IPS and XGS Firewall protections against several critical vulnerabilities identified in May, providing users with additional security measures. These protections were specifically designed to mitigate risks associated with remote code execution, elevation of privilege, information disclosure, and security feature bypass vulnerabilities.

In conclusion, May continued the emphasis on remote code execution issues seen in previous months, underlining the importance of timely patching and proactive security measures to protect against potential exploits. Users were advised to download Microsoft updates manually if necessary and utilize the available protections to safeguard their systems against cyber threats.

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