Microsoft Issues Record 972 Patches; Researcher Bypasses Key Defender Fix Same Day
Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday included 972 CVEs — the largest single patch release in the company's history — with 113 rated Critical and 258 addressing remote code execution flaws. Among the fixes was a second attempt to patch CVE-2026-69414, a Windows Defender vulnerability that had already been incompletely addressed in July and August. On the same day the patches went live, security researcher Nightmare Eclipse published a proof-of-concept called ShieldCrash, demonstrating that the updated Defender fix still fails under specific conditions, allowing arbitrary file reads with SYSTEM-level privileges. This marks the third consecutive disclosure targeting the same underlying flaw in Defender's file-handling logic, with Microsoft having now patched it twice unsuccessfully. The researcher, who has disclosed nine Defender and Windows zero-days since April 2026, continued publishing despite Microsoft previously threatening legal action over the disclosures.
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