Microsoft takes it easy on February's Patch Tuesday

Patch Tuesday Microsoft’s February patch collection is mercifully smaller than January’s mega-dump. But don't get too relaxed – some deserve close attention, and other vendors have stepped in with plenty more fixes. Of the 63 patches (including six released earlier in the month) Microsoft announced, two are already being exploited. Both require attackers to be local and authenticated. One is CVE-2025-21418: A CVSS 7.8-scored elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver for Winsock that allows an attacker to execute a specially crafted program to gain SYSTEM-level privileges. The flaw affects machines running Windows 10, 11, and various versions of Windows Server. The other: CVE-2025-21391, a CVSS 7.1-rated elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Storage that means a local attacker can delete files under limited and vague conditions. As Windows Storage is present in Windows Server, that raises the possibility that data apps rely on could be deleted. Microsoft also detailed two issues that are publicly known, even if they haven't yet been exploited. Those of you with Surface kit - a laptop or tablet – may wish to consider fixing CVE-2025-21194, a 7.1-rated vulnerability that means some PCs are susceptible to compromise of the hypervisor and the secure kernel. Hypervisor compromises are very nasty, but Microsoft says exploiting this flaw “requires multiple conditions to be met, such as specific application behavior, user actions, manipula...