February 2026 Patch Tuesday: Six new and actively exploited Microsoft vulnerabilities addressed
Summary
Microsoft released 60 security fixes in February 2026 Patch Tuesday, including six actively exploited vulnerabilities. Three of these are security feature bypasses (CVE-2026-21510, CVE-2026-21513, CVE-2026-21514) that let attackers trick users into opening malicious files to execute code and bypass protections like Windows SmartScreen, while two allow privilege escalation (CVE-2026-21519, CVE-2026-21533). The good news is that all six issues are easy to fix with regular Microsoft patches for Windows and Office without requiring any additional configuration steps after patching.
Solution / Mitigation
Apply the regular Microsoft patches for Windows and Office released in the February 2026 Patch Tuesday update. According to the source, these patches resolve all six actively exploited vulnerabilities and require no post-patch configuration steps.
Classification
Original source: https://www.csoonline.com/article/4130446/february-2026-patch-tuesday-six-new-and-actively-exploited-microsoft-vulnerabilities-addressed.html
First tracked: February 12, 2026 at 02:20 PM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 95%