Microsoft Corp. today released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, almost triple the number of vulnerabilities the software giant fixed in its record-smashing Patch Tuesday release last month. Microsoft attributed the burgeoning patch counts to vulnerability discoveries aided by artificial intelligence.
Nearly 60 of the bugs quashed in July’s Patch Tuesday earned a “critical” severity rating, meaning miscreants or malware could use them to seize remote control over a Windows device with little or no help from the user. Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws, including two that are already being exploited in the wild.
Two of the zero-day weaknesses allow an attacker to elevate their user rights on a Windows system, as do approximately 250 other elevation of privilege flaws fixed this month; they include CVE-2026-56155 — an Active Directory Federation Services bug — and CVE-2026-56164, a Microsoft Sharepoint vulnerability.
CVE-2026-50661 is a security feature bypass in Windows BitLocker that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted data if they have physical access to the device. Microsoft said this bug has been detailed publicly, but that it is not aware of any active exploitation.
In a blog post on July 9, Microsoft Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri wrote that Windows users will notice “a higher volume of security updates included in each security release” as a result of AI aiding in the discovery of vulnerabilities.
“The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis,” Davuluri wrote.
Jack Bicer, director of vulnerability research at Action1, called attention to CVE-2026-48561, a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Copilot (with a 9.6 CVSS threat score) that allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over the network. Microsoft says an attacker could exploit this bug by hosting a malicious website that causes Microsoft Edge for Android to automatically send crafted prompts to Copilot when a user visits the site.
As AI advances the state of vulnerability discovery and remediation, it is also making it easier for attackers to quickly devise working exploits for known software flaws. Microsoft has long labeled security bugs using its “exploitability index,” which is Redmond’s best guess as to how likely it is that attackers will be able to figure out a reliable way to exploit a given vulnerability.
But Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, argues that Microsoft’s exploitability index needs to do a better job of shifting with the machine speed of discovery. For example, Microsoft originally gave this month’s SharePoint zero-day an exploitability rating of “less likely,” although the flaw was added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list on July 1.
“Anthropic’s Red Team’s own findings for known vulnerabilities (n-days) revealed how fragile this system has become, with its Mythos Preview model being able to produce proof-of-concept exploits for 13 of 14 vulnerabilities that were rated ‘Exploitation Less Likely’ or ‘Exploitation Unlikely,'” Narang said. “What this means is that our way of looking at Patch Tuesday has changed, because the exploitability index is centered around humans, not AI tools, and as these tools continue to improve, defense needs to improve alongside it.”
Chris Goettl at Ivanti observed that the record patch numbers from Microsoft come as a number of other major software makers are increasing their patch cadence, including Adobe which announced today it is moving to twice-monthly security bulletins published on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month (Adobe also cited AI for accelerating their patch cycles). Cisco, Mozilla and Oracle also are shipping updates more frequently, while Google’s patch batches in June 2026 totaled more than 900 security fixes, Goettl noted.
Backing up your Windows system and/or data is always a good idea before applying operating system updates. Given the volume of patches addressed this month it may be wise for end users to wait a few days before applying these fixes. It’s not uncommon for security patches to introduce system stability issues, and those chances probably increase quite a bit with the gigantic patch count released today.
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A poco più di un mese dal debutto di Pixel 10 iniziano già a circolare indiscrezioni sul suo successore. Secondo fonti vicine allo sviluppo, il futuro Pixel 11 potrebbe segnare un cambiamento significativo: il passaggio dal modem Samsung Exynos 5400i al nuovo MediaTek M90, integrato nel Tensor G6.
Alla fine del 2024 si era parlato di un possibile utilizzo di modem MediaTek già sulla serie Pixel 10, ipotesi poi smentita dal mantenimento dell’Exynos. Ora però, secondo Mystic Leaks, Google starebbe effettuando test interni preliminari con il MediaTek M90. Le prove emergono da uno screenshot della riga di comando, in cui compare la versione baseband “a900a”, mentre il bootloader riporta il nome in codice “spacecraft” (per confronto, sul Pixel 10 era “deepspace”).
Il modem M90 è stato presentato da MediaTek al MWC 2025 di Barcellona. Tra le specifiche dichiarate:
Velocità di picco fino a 12 Gbps in download.
Supporto dual 5G SIM dual-active, con gestione dati su entrambe le schede.
AI integrata per migliorare l’efficienza energetica e le prestazioni generali del dispositivo.
Connettività satellitare, un requisito ormai imprescindibile per i flagship.
Non è stato comunicato il process node, mentre sappiamo che l’Exynos 5400i utilizzato finora è realizzato a 4 nm. MediaTek ha fissato la disponibilità dei primi sample ingegneristici per la seconda metà del 2025.
Negli ultimi due anni, l’Exynos 5400i ha contribuito a ridurre i problemi di surriscaldamento che avevano caratterizzato i modem precedenti dei Pixel. Tuttavia, MediaTek sostiene che il nuovo M90 offra un consumo medio ridotto del 18%, un dato che potrebbe convincere Google a valutare la transizione, anche in un’ottica di ulteriore allontanamento dalla filiera Samsung.
Lato SoC, Tensor G6 (indicato con il nome in codice Malibu) sarà il cuore del Pixel 11. In passato si era parlato di una produzione basata sul nodo N3P di TSMC (con architettura 1+6 core), ma nuove indiscrezioni hanno suggerito un salto verso il processo a 2 nm di TSMC, il che renderebbe Tensor G6 uno dei SoC più avanzati in circolazione al momento del lancio.
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