The 2025 Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report reveals a record-breaking 1,360 total vulnerabilities in 2024, highlighting an 11% increase from the previous year, with a notable rise in Security Feature Bypass vulnerabilities. Despite the uptick in some areas, critical vulnerabilities continue to decline overall, though Microsoft Edge showed an unexpected increase. #MicrosoftVulnerabilities #SecurityFeatureBypass #MicrosoftEdge
Keypoints
- Annual cybersecurity reports typically include sections such as an Executive Summary, Key Findings and Data Highlights, Deep Dives into specific vulnerability categories, Trend Analysis, Expert Commentaries, Methodology, and Additional Resources.
- The Executive Summary provides an overview of the report’s scope and significance, often discussing historical context and overarching trends.
- Key Findings and Data Highlights summarize critical statistics, trends, and significant changes observed over the reporting period.
- Deep Dive sections explore specific categories of vulnerabilities, examining their distribution, characteristics, and impacts on different Microsoft products.
- Trend analysis often includes multi-year comparisons to illustrate patterns in vulnerability counts and categories.
- Expert Commentaries provide insights and opinions from leading cybersecurity professionals on the report’s findings and implications.
- Methodology sections explain data sources, collection processes, and the accuracy of the information presented.
- The 2024 data showed Microsoft experienced a record high of 1,360 vulnerabilities, an 11% increase from 2023, continuing a broad upward trend over five years.
- Remote Code Execution (RCE) and Elevation of Privilege (EoP) remain the dominant categories, with EoP accounting for 40% of total vulnerabilities in 2024.
- Security Feature Bypass vulnerabilities surged 60% year-over-year, rising from 56 in 2023 to 90 in 2024, marking a notable emerging threat.
- Microsoft’s critical vulnerabilities declined overall to an all-time low, demonstrating improvements in software architecture and development practices.
- However, Microsoft Edge exhibited an unusual increase in critical vulnerabilities, rising to nine in 2024 from zero in 2022, indicating potential browser security challenges.
- Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 vulnerabilities stabilized in 2024, showing a plateau after previous fluctuations.
- Recurring themes emphasize the importance of timely patching and applying the principle of least privilege (PoLP) as key mitigations against exploitation risks.
- The report reflects a complex cybersecurity landscape within the Microsoft ecosystem, balancing progress in risk reduction with emerging and evolving threats.
Source: Awesome Annual Security Reports - The reports in this collection are limited to content which does not require a paid subscription, membership, or service contract. (https://github.com/jacobdjwilson/awesome-annual-security-reports/)