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Microsoft has released 71 security fixes for software including an actively-exploited zero-day bug in Win32k. 

The Redmond giant's latest round of patches, usually released on the second Tuesday of each month in what is known as Patch Tuesday, includes fixes for a total of four zero-day flaws, three of which are public.

Products impacted by October's security update include Microsoft Office, Exchange Server, MSHTML, Visual Studio, and the Edge browser. 

The zero-day bugs are tracked as CVE-2021-40449, CVE-2021-41338, CVE-2021-40469, and CVE-2021-41335.   

CVE-2021-40449 is being actively exploited. Issued a CVSS severity score of 7.8, this vulnerability impacts the Win32K kernel driver. Boris Larin (oct0xor) with Kaspersky reported the flaw to Microsoft, and in a blog post published today, the cybersecurity firm said a clutter of activity, dubbed MysterySnail, is utilizing the use-after-free flaw.

"Besides finding the zero-day in the wild, we analyzed the malware payload used along with the zero-day exploit, and found that variants of the malware were detected in widespread espionage campaigns against IT companies, military/defense contractors, and diplomatic entities," Kaspersky says.

Immersive Labs' Kevin Breen, Director of Cyber Threat Research, said that this issue "should definitely be a priority to patch." 

"It's noted as 'exploitation detected', meaning attackers are already using it against organizations to gain admin rights," Breen commented. "Gaining this level of access on a compromised host is the first step towards becoming a domain admin -- and securing full access to a network."

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The three other zero-day vulnerabilities resolved in this round of patches are CVE-2021-41338 (CVSS 5.5), a Windows AppContainer Firewall bug that permits attackers to bypass security features; CVE-2021-40469 (CVSS 7.2), an RCE in Windows DNS Server; and CVE-2021-41335 (CVSS 7.8), an elevation of privilege bug in the Windows Kernel. 

Three critical bugs, CVE-2021-40486, CVE-2021-38672, and CVE-2021-40461, are also of note. The first security flaw impacts Microsoft Word whereas the other two affect Hyper-V. If exploited, all of them can lead to remote code execution.

According to the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), 11 of the security flaws patched this month were submitted through the ZDI program, including bugs resolved earlier in the month by the Edge browser team.

Last month, Microsoft resolved over 60 bugs in the September batch of security fixes including an RCE flaw in MSHTML and a Windows DNS privilege escalation zero-day vulnerability. 

A month prior, the tech giant tackled 45 security flaws -- seven of which were deemed critical -- during the August Patch Tuesday.

In other Microsoft news, the tech giant is readying a new Feedback Portal, expected to be ready in preview mode, by the end of 2021. The portal will be opened first for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Edge products. The Redmond giant has also recently warned of password spraying attacks being launched against Office 365 customers. 

Alongside Microsoft's Patch Tuesday round, other vendors, too, have published security updates which can be accessed below.

• Adobe security updates
• SAP security updates
• VMWare security advisories
• Intel security updates