Microsoft Reveals 78% of Exploited Vulnerabilities Enable System Takeover and Privilege Escalation

What happened?

Microsoft’s new research shows that attackers pick flaws that give them control of a system. About 78% of vulnerabilities exploited in real attacks let an attacker take over a system or raise their privileges. The finding comes from a data study published on November 2, 2026, by Microsoft Security Research. Software flaws keep piling up. From 1999 through September 2026, about 383,000 vulnerabilities were disclosed. Only about 2,000 of them, roughly 0.5%, were linked to real-world exploitation.

Key details

• Only about 2,000 of 383,000 disclosed vulnerabilities were linked to real-world exploitation.
• Attackers favor remote code execution, privilege escalation, and authentication bypass bugs over other types.
• Operating system flaws rise from 23% of all CVEs to 41% of exploited ones.
• Server-side remote code execution increases from 20% of all CVEs to 37% of exploited CVEs.
• Median patching takes two weeks on Windows workstations but over a month on Windows Servers.

Summarised by SecOraLens from Cyber Security News. Always read the original source before acting. How SecOraLens verifies advisories.