Microsoft’s August 2026 Patch Tuesday closes at 751 CVE entries (across all product families), with 108 rated as critical. One flaw is already exploited, CVE-2026-68820, an elevation of privilege in the Windows WinSock driver (afd.sys). Two more were disclosed but not exploited, CVE-2026-62832 (User Profile Service) and CVE-2026-72971.
This security-only release earns Patch Now for Windows, Office and Exchange; no SQL Server updates this month. Unfortunately, several critical issues affect server roles: Windows DNS Server carries a cluster of critical RCEs; Windows DHCP Server is the most-populated Microsoft product family at 14 entries. Testing should lead with printing and fonts and the Remote Desktop client, then a WinSock smoke test given the exploited afd.sys flaw. The Readiness team has provided a helpful infographic on the deployment risks for this Microsoft August update.
Known issues
Both August client and server-side updates ship with empty known-issues lists. This may change over the coming days so checking back to the Microsoft Security Update Guide (MSRC) may be prudent. July’s open items have all closed: the Dell/Intel driver hold, the mid-July WSUS sync degradation, and the Emoji Panel GIF outage (August swaps in GIPHY).
