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March 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast: Is AI security an oxymoron? Developers and analysts are using more AI tools to produce code and to test both the performance and security of the finished products. They are also embedding AI functionality in their products directly. But just how secure are these AI tools and routines themselves? Recent reports show they suffer from vulnerabilities just like any other code. For example, Google recently provided an update for CVE-2026-0628, associated with Gemini AI implemented in the Chrome browser. This elevation of privilege vulnerability, rated High with a CVSS of 8.8, was recently reported in detail by Palo Alto Networks security research team. Per Palo Alto, “this vulnerability could have allowed malicious extensions with basic permissions to hijack the new Gemini Live in Chrome browser panel.” In a somewhat related story, there are continued reports of users downloading ‘AI’ extensions to take advantage of the latest AI tools. As explained in the article, to all appearances these extensions may provide some expected functionality when in fact they are penetrating and collecting data from your system! Even more troublesome is that they are appearing in many app stores for easy download, piggybacking on the need for more AI tools. Microsoft ddds Copilot data protections, issues minor server patch On a positive note regarding AI use, Microsoft is introducing more control over which files Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant can access during its data processing. This is in direct response to many customers’ reporting Copilot included confidential information in its reports. Office file data loss prevention (DLP) can be applied to files stored on OneDrive and SharePoint to prevent Copilot access, but the DLP was not carried over to files saved outside of those locations on the local system; hence the source of the confidential information. This should appear in April and will be applied by default, but it is important to note this is not a change in Copilot, but rather a change to use of Microsoft DLP settings. If you don’t want Copilot to access your files, it is imperative you start to use the proper DLP control over your Office files. Microsoft provided a solid set of updates on last Patch Tuesday, and as a result, February was kind of lean from a Microsoft patch perspective. After a flurry of OOB patches in January addressing performance and security issues, we had none in February and only one on March 2nd. The update was KB 5082314 for Server 2022, which according to Microsoft, “addresses an issue affecting certificate renewal for Windows Hello for Business in certain Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)–based deployments on Windows Server 2022.” It only impacts organizations that are using ADFS deployments, so it is not critical if you are not using them. This OOB patch is cumulative, including the February Patch Tuesday updates, and will be rolled into the March updates as well. Notepad++ 8.9.2 secures updates with double-lock design I mentioned last month that NotePad++ reported a security exposure on their blog concerning compromised product updates. On February 16th, they announced the release of version 8.9.2 which incorporates a new ‘double lock’ design with certificate and signature verification to provide enhanced security protection to their update process. All users are encouraged to move quickly to this version to prevent compromise and to confirm the download being used is coming from notepad-plus-plus.org. Apple releases security fixes for macOS, iOS, and Safari Apple released major security updates for all their operating systems, plus Safari, in the shadow of Patch Tuesday on Wednesday February 11th. If you missed those, you should move quickly to update macOS Tahoe 26.3 addressing 55 CVEs, macOS Sequioa 15.7.4 addressing 36 CVEs, and macOS Sonoma 14.8.4 with 42 CVEs. There were also same-day version 26.3 updates for iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, and Safari. You should have included these in your Patch Tuesday deployments for last month. Apple also provided some early March 26.3.1 updates, but they don’t have any associated CVEs listed. March 2026 Patch Tuesday forecast Microsoft released a solid set of updates last month and I hope that continues with a controlled and well-tested set of vulnerabilities addressed. The usual OS and ESU updates will be released. It appears Microsoft Office will continue to update the Office 2016 apps as well as Office 2019, so expect them as well as the usual click-to-run online versions. The wildcard will always be a .NET framework, SQL server, or Exchange Server update. The Adobe rotation for Creative Cloud Apps updates will most likely contain Illustrator and Photoshop, and perhaps a few others. The quarterly update for Acrobat and Acrobat Reader is usually in April, but we could get a minor update this month if a critical fix is needed. Apple trickled out new updates for iOS and macOS Tahoe on March 4th, so be on the lookout for the remaining supported operating systems to appear in the next couple of days. The Google Chrome 146 beta was released late this week, so we may not see an update on Patch Tuesday. But based on my AI comments earlier regarding Gemini AI and Chrome extensions, make sure you are keeping up with the updates when they are released. The releases for Mozilla products next week may be very limited. They released major updates for Firefox 148, Firefox ESR 140.8, Firefox ESR 115.33, Thunderbird 148, and Thunderbird ESR 140.8 on February 24th, so it should be quiet next week, but make sure have these deployed already. The AI craze is upon us, so it pays to be very cautious about which apps and what functionality you are allowing into your networks. Using AI technology to build more secure code or assist with business functionality is definitely needed, but be aware of the vulnerabilities which may exist within that code leading to the ‘AI security’ terminology oxymoron.

Notepad++ has released a security fix to plug gaps that were exploited by an advanced threat actor from China to hijack the software update mechanism to selectively deliver malware to targets of interest. The version 8.9.2 update incorporates what maintainer Don Ho calls a "double lock" design that aims to make the update process "robust and effectively unexploitable." This includes verification of the signed installer downloaded from GitHub (implemented in version 8.8.9 and later), as well as the newly added verification of the signed XML returned by the update server at notepad-plus-plus[.]org. In addition to these enhancements, security-focused changes have been introduced to WinGUp, the auto-updater component - Removal of libcurl.dll to eliminate DLL side-loading risk Removal of two unsecured cURL SSL options: CURLSSLOPT_ALLOW_BEAST and CURLSSLOPT_NO_REVOKE Restriction of plugin management execution to programs signed with the same certificate as WinGUp The update also addresses a high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2026-25926, CVSS score: 7.3) that could result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the running application. "An Unsafe Search Path vulnerability (CWE-426) exists when launching Windows Explorer without an absolute executable path," Ho said. "This may allow execution of a malicious explorer.exe if an attacker can control the process working directory. Under certain conditions, this could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the running application." The development comes weeks after Notepad++ disclosed that a breach at the hosting provider level enabled threat actors to hijack update traffic starting June 2025 and redirect requests from certain users to malicious servers to serve a poisoned update. The issue was detected in early December 2025. According to Rapid7 and Kaspersky, the tampered updates enabled the attackers to deliver a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed Chrysalis. The supply chain incident, tracked under the CVE identifier CVE-2025-15556 (CVSS score: 7.7), has been attributed to a China-nexus hacking group called Lotus Panda. The attack is assessed to have targeted individuals and organizations located in Vietnam, El Salvador, Australia, the Philippines, the U.S., South America, and Europe, spanning cloud hosting, energy, financial, government, manufacturing, and software development sectors, per data from Kaspersky and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. Notepad++ users are recommended to update to version 8.9.2, and make sure that the installers are downloaded from the official domain.

Notepad++ has adopted a “double-lock” design for its update mechanism to address recently exploited security gaps that resulted in a supply-chain compromise. The new mechanism landed in Notepad++ version 8.9.2, announced yesterday, although work on it began in version 8.8.9 with implementing the verification of the signed installer from GitHub. The second part of the double-lock system is checking the signed XML from the notepad-plus-plus.org domain. In practice, this means that the XML file returned from the update service is digitally signed (XMLDSig). The combination of the two verification mechanisms adds to a more robust "and effectively unexploitable" update process, says the team behind the massively popular open-source text and source code editor. Additional security-oriented changes applied to the auto-updater include: Removal of libcurl.dll to eliminate DLL side-loading risk Removal of two unsecured cURL SSL options: CURLSSLOPT_ALLOW_BEAST and CURLSSLOPT_NO_REVOKE Restriction of plugin management execution to programs signed with the same certificate as WinGUp The new announcement also notes that users can exclude the auto-updater during UI installation or deploy the MSI package with: msiexec /i npp.8.9.2.Installer.x64.msi NOUPDATER=1 Earlier this month, Notepad++ and Rapid7 researchers disclosed that the update infrastructure was compromised in a six-month-long campaign attributed to Lotus Blossom, a threat group linked to China. Starting in June 2025, the bad actor compromised the hosting provider that ran the Notepad++ updater and selectively redirected update requests from specific users to malicious servers. The attacks exploited weak update verification controls used in older versions of the software, and continued until their discovery on December 2, 2025. Rapid7’s analysis revealed that the Chinese hackers used a custom backdoor called “Chrysalis” as part of the attack chain. Apart from the newly introduced security measures, the project immediately switched to a different hosting provider, rotated credentials, and fixed flaws exploited in the discovered attacks. The recommended action for all Notepad++ users is to upgrade to version 8.9.2, and ensure that installers are always downloaded from the official domain, notepad-plus-plus.org. Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply. The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments. Get the report

How state-sponsored attackers hijacked Notepad++ updates UPDATE: Notepad++ supply chain attack: Researchers reveal details, IoCs, targets Suspected Chinese state-sponsored attackers hijacked the Notepad++ update mechanism by compromising the software project’s shared hosting server and intercepting and redirecting update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org, the software’s maintainer Don Ho confirmed on Monday. The attack timeline In early December 2025, security researcher Kevin Beaumont said that he knew of three organizations that have had security incidents traced back to Notepad++ processes providing the attackers initial access to the computers. “I’ve only talked to a small number of victims. They are orgs with interests in East Asia. Activity appears very targeted. Victims report hands on keyboard recon activity, with activity starting around two months ago,” he shared at the time. The attackers were able to pull off this supply chain attack by leveraging security weaknesses in Notepad++’s updater (WinGUp). Before version 8.8.8, which was released in mid-November 2025, the updater code was not hardened enough to make it impossible to change the source from which updates are downloaded. Since then, downloads can only be received from GitHub. (Also, before version 8.8.9, the updater did not validate the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded update file.) This state of affairs has been exploited by the attackers, who managed to intercept the network traffic between the updater client and the Notepad++ update infrastructure, to deliver and execute a malicious update instead of a benign one. “Because traffic to notepad-plus-plus.org is fairly rare, it may be possible to sit inside the ISP chain and redirect to a different download,” Beaumont noted in December. “To do this at any kind of scale requires a lot of resources.” Beaumont shared that the targeted organizations were telecommunications and financial services organizations in East Asia, and attributed the attacks to Chinese nation-state threat actors Zirconium, aka Violet Typhoon. The supply chain compromise apparently happened in June 2025 and, according to the software’s hosting provider, the shared hosting server remained compromised until September 2, 2025, when the attackers lost access to it after its kernel and firmware were updated. “Even though the bad actors have lost access to the server from the 2nd of September, 2025, they maintained the credentials of our internal services existing on that server until the 2nd of December, which could have allowed the malicious actors to redirect some of the traffic going to https://notepad-plus-plus.org/getDownloadUrl.php to their own servers and return the updates download URL with compromised updates,” the hosting provider told Ho. “The bad actors specifically searched for https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ domain with the goal to intercept the traffic to [the Notepad++] website, as they might know the then-existing Notepad++ vulnerabilities related to insufficient update verification controls.” The hosting provider stated that they have fixed vulnerabilities in the shared hosting server and that the threat actors “tried to re-exploit one of the fixed vulnerabilities” and failed, which seems to suggest this is how they managed to gain access the first time. Advice for organizations Ho said that since the incident: The Notepad++ website has been migrated to a new hosting provider The WinGUp updater has been enhanced so it verifies both the certificate and the signature of the downloaded installer The XML file containing the download URL for the update is now signed, and the certificate and signature verification will be enforced starting with the upcoming v8.9.2, to be released in a month. While Notepad++ is a program that’s used by IT and software development staff in many organizations around the world, it seems that this particular attack was aimed at very specific targets. That’s why, back in December, Beaumont advised organizations not to over react to the news, but to still check for: gup.exe making network requests for other than notepad-plus-plus.org, github.com and release-assets.githubusercontent.com unexpected processes spawned by the installer specific files (update.exe or AutoUpdater.exe) in the user TEMP folder. Also, given that other attackers are often peddling malware masquerading as Notepad++, to check whether the version installed on users’ computers is legitimate. “If you’re a large enterprise who package manage Notepad++ and update it, you may want to block notepad-plus-plus.org or block the gup.exe process from having internet access. You may also want to block internet access from the notepad++.exe process, unless you have robust monitoring for [third-party Notepad++] extensions,” he concluded. Subscribe to our breaking news e-mail alert to never miss out on the latest breaches, vulnerabilities and cybersecurity threats. Subscribe here!

The maintainer of Notepad++ has revealed that state-sponsored attackers hijacked the utility's update mechanism to redirect update traffic to malicious servers instead. "The attack involved [an] infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org," developer Don Ho said. "The compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself." The exact mechanism through which this was realized is currently being investigated, Ho added. The development comes a little over a month after Notepad++ released version 8.8.9 to address an issue that resulted in traffic from WinGUp, the Notepad++ updater, being "occasionally" redirected to malicious domains, resulting in the download of poisoned executables. Specifically, the problem stemmed from the way the updater verified the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded update file, allowing an attacker who is able to intercept network traffic between the updater client and the update server to trick the tool into downloading a different binary instead. It's believed this redirection was highly targeted, with traffic originating from only certain users routed to the rogue servers and fetching the malicious components. The incident is assessed to have commenced in June 2025, more than six months before it came to light. Independent security researcher Kevin Beaumont revealed that the flaw was being exploited by threat actors in China to hijack networks and deceive targets into downloading malware. The attacks, attributed to a nation-state threat actor known as Violet Typhoon (aka APT31), targeted telecommunications and financial services organizations in East Asia. In response to the security incident, the Notepad++ website has been migrated to a new hosting provider with "significantly strong practices," and the update process has been hardened with additional guardrails to ensure its integrity. "According to the former hosting provider, the shared hosting server was compromised until September 2, 2025," Ho explained. "Even after losing server access, attackers maintained credentials to internal services until December 2, 2025, which allowed them to continue redirecting Notepad++ update traffic to malicious servers."