RoguePlanet
CVE-2026-50656, publicly referred to as RoguePlanet, is a local elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine used by Microsoft Defender. Based on the provided advisory context, the flaw is caused by improper link resolution before file access, i.e., link following. Supporting reporting further states that exploitation abuses a race condition in Defender during file handling, allowing an attacker to influence how the engine resolves links before accessing files. A public proof-of-concept released by the researcher known as Nightmare Eclipse reportedly demonstrates exploitation on fully patched Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems, resulting in a SYSTEM-level command shell.
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Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
12 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A privilege escalation vulnerability in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine in Microsoft Defender, publicly referred to as RoguePlanet. It exploits a race condition to gain SYSTEM privileges.
An elevation-of-privilege zero-day in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine in Microsoft Defender, described as a race condition that can allow attackers to spawn command prompts with SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices.
A local privilege escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Defender caused by improper link resolution before file access and exploitable via a race condition to obtain SYSTEM privileges.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.