Tech
Microsoft patches 112 CVEs on first Patch Tuesday of 2026 | Computer Weekly
Microsoft has pushed fixes for 112 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) on the first Patch Tuesday of 2026, among them a number of zero-day flaws that were either publicly disclosed or actively exploited prior to patching, and no fewer than eight critical bugs.
Although this is a sharp increase in comparison to recent Patch Tuesdays – December 2025 saw Microsoft patch just 56 flaws – it is important to note that the festive season is frequently a quieter time for patches, sometimes by design, and January often brings an uptick in disclosures. Nevertheless, observed Jack Bicer, director of vulnerability research at patch management firm Action1, the volume of fixes in the latest update underscores “growing pressure” on security teams.
“This comes against a broader trend: in 2025, reported vulnerabilities increased by 12% over 2024, continuing the upward trajectory of disclosed security flaws,” said Bicer.
Paramount among these flaws is CVE-2026-20805, an information disclosure vulnerability in Desktop Window Manager, discovered by Microsoft’s own Threat Intelligence and Security Response Centers.
Although it bears a relatively low Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of just 5.5, active exploitation of CVE-2026-20805 has been observed in the wild, Microsoft said
“The flaw leaks a memory address from a remote ALPC [Asynchronous Local Procedure Call] port. This type of information disclosure vulnerability is often used to defeat Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR) – a security feature in modern operating systems designed to protect against buffer overflows and other exploits that rely on manipulating the memory of a running application,” explained Immersive senior director of cyber threat research, Kev Breen.
“Once they know where code resides in memory, they can chain this with a separate code execution bug to turn a difficult exploit into a reliable one,” he said. “Microsoft doesn’t provide any information on what other components that chain could involve – making it harder for defenders to threat hunt for potential exploitation attempts, meaning patching quickly is the only mitigation for now.”
Ivanti vice president of security product management, Chris Goettl, agreed with this assessment. “The vulnerability affects all currently supported and extended security update supported versions of the Windows OS,” he said, “[so] a risk-based prioritisation methodology warrants treating this vulnerability as a higher severity than the vendor rating or CVSS score assigned.”
Next up is a security feature bypass (SFB) flaw in Secure Boot Certificate Expiration, tracked as CVE-2026-21265. It, too, carries a comparatively low CVSS score and Microsoft only rates it as Important. However, said Goettl, it has been publicly disclosed and security teams would be wise to look into it.
“The fix provides a warning regarding certificates that will be expiring in 2026 and details on actions that are required to up renew certificates prior to their expiration in addition to the update,” he said.
“It is recommended to start investigating what actions your organisation may need to take to prevent potential serviceability and security as certificates expire.”
The remaining items on the zero-day list – again both publicly disclosed but not known to be exploited, date back three and four years respectively. Both are elevation of privilege (EoP) flaws affecting soft modem drivers that ship natively with supported Windows operating systems.
The older of the two, CVE-2023-31096, is to be found in Agere Soft Modem Driver, and the more recent one, CVE-2024-55414 in Windows Motorola Soft Modem Driver. Microsoft’s solution is to remove the affected drivers, agrsm64.sys and arsm.sys in the first instances and smserl64.sys and smserial.sys in the second, as part of the January cumulative update.
This means soft modem hardware that depends on them will now cease to work on Windows. Microsoft said admins should act quickly to remove any existing dependencies on the affected hardware.
Critical flaws
The critically-rated flaws in the January 2026 Patch Tuesday drop comprise six remote code execution (RCE) issues and two EoP issues.
The RCE flaws affect Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office and Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS). They have been assigned designations CVE-2026-20854, CVE-2026-20944, CVE-2026-20952, CVE-2026-20953, CVE-2026-20955 and CVE-2026-20957.
The EoP flaws are CVE-2026-20822, which impacts the Windows Graphics Component, and CVE-2026-20876, which impacts Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Enclave.
Mike Walters, president and co-founder at Action1, said the VBS flaw was worth particular attention because “it breaks the security boundary designed to protect Windows itself, allowing attackers to climb into the one of the most trusted execution layers of the system”.
Walters warned of a serious risk to organisations that lean on VBS in order to protect credentials and other secrets, or sensitive workloads, because if exploited successfully, an attacker might be able to bypass security controls, achieve persistence, evade detection, and hit systems that security teams believe to be strongly isolated.
“Although exploitation requires high privileges, the impact is severe because it compromises virtualisation-based security itself. Attackers who already have a foothold could use this flaw to defeat advanced defenses, making prompt patching essential to maintain trust in Windows security boundaries,” he said.
“If the patch cannot be applied immediately, restrict administrative access, enforce strong privilege management, and monitor for abnormal activity involving VBS or enclave-related processes.”
Tech
Lenovo’s Latest Wacky Concepts Include a Laptop With a Built-In Portable Monitor
Do you like having a second screen with your computer setup? What if your laptop could carry a second screen for you? That’s the idea behind Lenovo’s latest proof of concept, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Lenovo is never shy to show off wacky, weird concept laptops. We’ve seen a PC with a transparent screen, one with a rollable OLED screen, a swiveling screen, and another with a flippy screen. At CES earlier this year, the company showed off a gaming laptop with a display that expands at the push of a button. Sometimes, these concepts turn into real products that go on sale (often in limited quantities).
At MWC 2026, Lenovo trotted out three concepts. While it’s unclear whether any of them will become real, purchasable products, there’s some unique utility here, and a peek at how computing experiences could change in the future.
A Laptop With a Built-In Portable Screen
As someone with a multi-screen setup at home and a fondness for portable monitors, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC appeals to me the most. At first glance, it looks like a normal laptop. Take a look behind, and you’ll notice there’s a second screen magnetically hanging off the back of the laptop, like a koala carrying a baby on its back.
The screen is connected to the laptop using pogo-pin connectors, so you can use it in this state to display content to people in front of you, say, if you were making a presentation during a meeting. Alternatively, you can pop this second screen off, remove a hidden kickstand resting under the laptop, and magnetically attach it to the 14-inch screen so that you have a traditional portable monitor experience. (You’ll need to connect this to the laptop via a USB-C cable in this orientation.)
If you don’t have the desk space for that orientation, you can always remove the keyboard from the base and pop the second screen there—it’ll auto-connect to the laptop via the pogo pins, and you’ll be able to use the Bluetooth keyboard to type on a dual-screen setup that resembles the Asus ZenBook Duo. The whole system is a fantastically portable method of improving productivity on the go, and the laptop isn’t too thick or cumbersome.
Tech
The 5 Big ‘Known Unknowns’ of Donald Trump’s New War With Iran
More recently, Iran has been a regular adversary in cyberspace—and while it hasn’t demonstrated quite the acuity of Russia or China, Iran is “good at finding ways to maximize the impact of their capabilities,” says Jeff Greene, the former executive assistant director of cybersecurity at CISA. Iran, in particular, famously was responsible for a series of distributed-denial-of-service attacks on Wall Street institutions that worried financial markets, and its 2012 attack on Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s Rasgas marked some of the earliest destructive infrastructure cyberattacks.
Today, surely, Iran is weighing which of these tools, networks, and operatives it might press into a response—and where, exactly, that response might come. Given its history of terror campaigns and cyberattacks, there’s no reason to think that Iran’s retaliatory options are limited to missiles alone—or even to the Middle East at all.
Which leads to the biggest known unknown of all:
5. How does this end? There’s an apocryphal story about a 1970s conversation between Henry Kissinger and a Chinese leader—it’s told variously as either Mao-Tse Tung or Zhou Enlai. Asked about the legacy of the French revolution, the Chinese leader quipped, “Too soon to tell.” The story almost surely didn’t happen, but it’s useful in speaking to a larger truth particularly in societies as old as the 2,500-year-old Persian empire: History has a long tail.
As much as Trump (and the world) might hope that democracy breaks out in Iran this spring, the CIA’s official assessment in February was that if Khamenei was killed, he would be likely replaced with hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And indeed, the fact that Iran’s retaliatory strikes against other targets in the Middle East continued throughout Saturday, even after the death of many senior regime officials—including, purportedly, the defense minister—belied the hope that the government was close to collapse.
The post-World War II history of Iran has surely hinged on three moments and its intersections with American foreign policy—the 1953 CIA coup, the 1979 revolution that removed the shah, and now the 2026 US attacks that have killed its supreme leader. In his recent bestselling book King of Kings, on the fall of the shah, longtime foreign correspondent Scott Anderson writes of 1979, “If one were to make a list of that small handful of revolutions that spurred change on a truly global scale in the modern era, that caused a paradigm shift in the way the world works, to the American, French, and Russian Revolutions might be added the Iranian.”
It is hard not to think today that we are living through a moment equally important in ways that we cannot yet fathom or imagine—and that we should be especially wary of any premature celebration or declarations of success given just how far-reaching Iran’s past turmoils have been.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly bragged about how he sees the military and Trump administration’s foreign policy as sending a message to America’s adversaries: “F-A-F-O,” playing off the vulgar colloquialism. Now, though, it’s the US doing the “F-A” portion in the skies over Iran—and the long arc of Iran’s history tells us that we’re a long, long way from the “F-O” part where we understand the consequences.
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.
Tech
This Backyard Smoker Delivers Results Even a Pitmaster Would Approve Of
While my love of smoked meats is well-documented, my own journey into actually tending the fire started just last spring when I jumped at the opportunity to review the Traeger Woodridge Pro. When Recteq came calling with a similar offer to check out the Flagship 1600, I figured it would be a good way to stay warm all winter.
While the two smokers have a lot in common, the Recteq definitely feels like an upgrade from the Traeger I’ve been using. Not only does it have nearly twice the cooking space, but the huge pellet hopper, rounded barrel, and proper smokestack help me feel like a real pitmaster.
The trade-off is losing some of the usability features that make the Woodridge Pro a great first smoker. The setup isn’t as quite as simple, and the larger footprint and less ergonomic conditions require a little more experience or patience. With both options, excellent smoked meat is just a few button presses away, but speaking as someone with both in their backyard, I’ve been firing up the Recteq more often.
Getting Settled
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Setting up the Recteq wasn’t as time-consuming as the Woodridge, but it was more difficult to manage on my own. Some of the steps, like attaching the bull horns to the lid, or flipping the barrel onto its stand, would really benefit from a patient friend or loved one. Like most smokers, you’ll need to run a burn-in cycle at 400 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure there’s nothing left over from manufacturing or shipping. Given the amount of setup time and need to cool down the smoker after, I would recommend setting this up Friday afternoon if you want to smoke on a Saturday.
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