Windows Kernel NDIS Driver Use-After-Free Local Privilege Escalation
CVE-2026-24289 is a local elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Windows caused by a use-after-free condition in the Windows NDIS driver, ndis.sys. The available reporting states the flaw results from insufficient validation that an object still exists before the kernel operates on it, leading to a stale pointer being dereferenced after the object has been freed. The issue is described as a memory-corruption flaw and has also been characterized in reporting as involving a race condition. An attacker who can execute code with low privileges on the target system can exploit the bug to achieve arbitrary code execution in kernel context. Microsoft rated the issue as more likely to be exploited, and public reporting assigns it CVSS 7.8 with vector AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.
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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
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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
14 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A Microsoft vulnerability mentioned as one of several privilege escalation flaws rated 'exploited more likely.'
A Microsoft vulnerability rated as 'exploited more likely' in the March 2026 Patch Tuesday release; the specific technical details are not provided in the content.
A Windows Kernel local elevation-of-privilege vulnerability flagged as 'Exploitation More Likely' by Microsoft.
A Windows kernel elevation-of-privilege vulnerability rated by Microsoft as more likely to be exploited due to low attack complexity and no special privileges/user interaction requirements.
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.