CVE-2026-50656: Microsoft Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Overview

Severity
High (CVSS 7.8)
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:F/RL:U/RC:C
Category
Elevation of Privilege
Exploit Status
Not Exploited
Exploitation Likelihood
More Likely
Publicly Disclosed
Yes
Patch Tuesday
2026-Jun
Released
2026-06-16
Last Updated
2026-07-08
EPSS Score
10.75% (percentile: 95.4%)

Description

Microsoft is aware of an elevation of privilege in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine in Microsoft Defender publicly referred to as "RoguePlanet ".

FAQ

References Identification Last version of the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine affected by this vulnerability 1.1.26050.11 First version of the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine with this vulnerability addressed 1.1.26060.3008 See Manage Updates Baselines Microsoft Defender Antivirus for more information. Microsoft Defender is disabled in my environment, why are vulnerability scanners showing that I am vulnerable to this issue? Vulnerability scanners are looking for specific binaries and version numbers on devices. Microsoft Defender files are still on disk even when disabled. Systems that have disabled Microsoft Defender are not in an exploitable state. Why is no action required to install this update? In response to a constantly changing threat landscape, Microsoft frequently updates malware definitions and the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine. In order to be effective in helping protect against new and prevalent threats, antimalware software must be kept up to date with these updates in a timely manner. For enterprise deployments as well as end users, the default configuration in Microsoft antimalware software helps ensure that malware definitions and the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine are kept up to date automatically. Product documentation also recommends that products are configured for automatic updating. Best practices recommend that customers regularly verify whether software distribution, such as the automatic deployment of Microsoft Malware Protection Engine updates and malware definitions, is working as expected in their environment. How often are the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine and malware definitions updated? Microsoft typically releases an update for the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine once a month or as needed to protect against new threats. Microsoft also typically updates the malware definitions three times daily and can increase the frequency when needed. Depending on which Microsoft antimalware software is used a

Detection & Weaponization (1 sources)

Maturity: Exploit

  • GitHub PoC: 2 repositories

Affected Products (1)

System Center

  • Microsoft Malware Protection Engine

Revision History

  • 2026-06-16: Information published.
  • 2026-07-08: Microsoft has released an update to the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine that addresses the vulnerability identified by CVE-2026-50656. Please see the FAQ for more information on how to check if the new version has been installed.