Microsoft Releases June 2023 Patch Tuesday Updates

Microsoft has just released the June 2023 Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 and Windows 10. On the security front, the software giant has fixed more than 60 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, and other components, with six security flaws being rated as “critical.”

On the quality and experiences update front, Microsoft is adding Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio support on Windows 11 version 22H2, and the company also addressed various bugs affecting Narrator, the touch keyboard, and more. Microsoft is also slightly tweaking how the taskbar searchbox works on Windows 10.

69 vulnerabilities fixed with the June 2023 Patch Tuesday updates

As pointed out by the Zero Day Initiative, Microsoft has fixed 69 new vulnerabilities this month, including six critical ones, though none of them are currently being exploited by attackers. Let’s take a look at the most important vulnerabilities Microsoft fixed this month:

• CVE-2023-24897: This is a critical .NET, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability.
• CVE-2023-29357: This critical Microsoft SharePoint Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability allows attackers who gained access to spoofed JWT authentication tokens to execute a network attack that bypasses authentication, allowing them to gain access to the privileges of an authenticated user.
• CVE-2023-32013: Microsoft said that the attack complexity for this critical Windows Hyper-V Denial of Service Vulnerability is high, and it requires an attacker to “prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability.”
• CVE-2023-29363: This critical Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability can allow attackers to trigger malicious code by sending a specially crafted file over the network when the Windows message queuing service is running in a PGM Server environment.

You can find below the full list of security patches Microsoft released this month: 

Quality and experiences updates

For users running Windows 11 version 22H2, today’s KB5027231 patch adds support for Bluetooth Low Energy audio. When using compatible Bluetooth headphones, users should get better audio quality and also see their battery last longer. Microsoft has also updated the Setting app to display the full amount of storage capacity across all of a user’s OneDrive subscriptions. 

On the quality front, users should no longer encounter issues when saving, copying, or attaching files using 32-bit apps that are large address aware and use the CopyFile API.  Moreover, this update fixed an issue causing the touch keyboard to not show the correct layout based on the current input scope. Lastly, Narrator should now announce text attributes correctly for words such as “misspelled,” “deletion change,” and “comment.”

At its Build conference last month, Microsoft detailed new features coming to Windows 11 as part of the “Moment 3” update. The list of changes includes a glanceable VPN icon on the taskbar, new privacy settings for presence-sensing features, as well as support for 10 additional languages for live captions. These “Moment 3” features are rolling out to consumers via a “controlled feature rollout” (CFR), and Microsoft said that they would be enabled by default in the June 2023 optional non-security preview release coming later this month.

In the meantime, consumers who have turned on the new Windows Update toggle for getting the latest updates as soon as they’re available can get these Moment 3 features without waiting. This new Windows Update toggle is disabled on managed devices, but IT pros can access these new features now via the Windows Insider Program Release Preview channel. 

For Windows 10 users, today’s KB5027215 patch will make the taskbar search box always appear when users choose to have a top, bottom, regular, or small icons taskbar. Moreover, this update now displays up to three high-priority toast notifications at the same time. 

Lastly, today also marks the end of support for Windows 10 version 21H2 for Home and Pro users. However, the Enterprise and Education editions of this OS will be supported until June 2024. 

Windows Update testing and best practices

Organizations looking to deploy this month’s patches should conduct thorough testing before deploying them widely on production systems. That said, applying the patches widely shouldn’t be delayed longer than necessary as hackers start to work out how to weaponize newly reported vulnerabilities.

A best practice is to make sure you have backed up systems before applying updates. Every month, users experience issues with Windows updates that lead to systems not booting, application and hardware compatibility issues, or even data loss in extreme cases.

There are backup tools built into Windows and Windows Server that you can use to restore systems in the event a patch causes a problem. The backup features in Windows can be used to restore an entire system, or files and folders on a granular basis.

If you have any problems with this month’s patches, please let us know in the comments below. Other readers might be able to share their experiences in how to roll back problematic updates or mitigate issues caused by patches that are important to have in place.