Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server 2025 Update Version 17.0.4065.4

KB5096981 delivers Cumulative Update 7 for Microsoft SQL Server 2025, including 10 fixes since CU6. It also updates SQL Server to version 17.0.4065.4 and Analysis Services to 17.0.25.223.

• Updates UCS encryption to use AES-256 instead of AES-128 when TLS is not explicitly enabled.
• Strengthens Service Broker dialog encryption by using AES-256.
• Adds logical capping to EDIT_DISTANCE to prevent overflow errors that an authenticated user could use for a denial-of-service crash.
• Fixes an insecure deserialization issue in the Message Queue task by removing support for legacy BinaryMessageFormatter (2000 format), preventing remote code execution from untrusted MSMQ messages.
• To help secure SQL Server on Windows, enable encryption with Extended Protection.

• Fixes intermittent errors 976 or 978 in monitoring queries that use sys.dm_exec_requests or sys.sysprocesses against a read-intent secondary replica in an availability group.
• Fixes a non-yielding scheduler condition when SQL Server writes a time zone-related error to the error log.
• Adds a trace flag to enable TLS 1.3 for SQL Server without editing the registry.
• Fixes a dump file issue when ALTER JSON INDEX REORGANIZE runs with statistics on the internal table of a JSON index.
• Fixes incorrect JSON parent offset calculation that can cause JSON corruption during JSON_MODIFY.
• Fixes a JSON_MODIFY merge operation issue that can cause corruption and a dump file.

• Adds a trace flag that enables TLS 1.3 for SQL Server without registry edits.

• Queries that use SESSION_CONTEXT in parallel plans might return incorrect results or trigger access violation dump files.
• Linked server queries that use MSDASQL with a provider string can fail with error 7416 because of stricter connection validation.
• Queries against sys.dm_exec_requests during database recovery can raise an access violation and generate a dump file; Microsoft recommends trace flag 4696, avoiding those queries during recovery, or uninstalling the update.

• Microsoft provides a downloadable Excel workbook with build summaries, support lifecycle information, and detailed fix lists for SQL Server 2025, 2022, 2019, and 2017.
• Bug reference IDs in the fix table can be linked directly using the #NNNNNNN bookmark format.
• For the sys.dm_exec_requests recovery issue, Microsoft suggests enabling trace flag 4696 as a temporary mitigation.

Product Information

Vendor: Microsoft

Product: SQL Server

Product type: Software

Variant: SQL Server 2025

Version: 17.0.4065.4

Vendor information published: Jul 16, 2026

Original release notes: View on vendor site

Published on updatealert.io: Sep 29, 2026