Skip to main content
Live Webinar with SANS (June 25)— Agentic CTI Automation for Fun & ProfitRegister Free
Mallory
High

Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

IdentifiersCVE-2026-40398CWE-122· Heap-based Buffer Overflow

CVE-2026-40398 is a heap-based buffer overflow in Windows Remote Desktop Services / Windows Remote Desktop that allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally. The available content indicates the flaw is triggered after authentication by a low-privileged user and results in privilege escalation to SYSTEM. Specific vulnerable routines or code paths are not provided in the supplied material.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

ANALYST BRIEF

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.

Successful exploitation allows an authenticated local attacker with low privileges to obtain SYSTEM-level privileges on the affected Windows host. This enables full compromise of the local system, including unrestricted access to protected data, modification of system configuration and security controls, installation of software or persistence mechanisms, and the ability to use the compromised host for further lateral movement or follow-on activity.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure by limiting local and Remote Desktop logon rights to trusted administrators and users only, minimizing the number of low-privileged accounts with interactive access, restricting RDP access through segmentation and access controls, and monitoring for anomalous privilege-escalation behavior from Remote Desktop sessions. No vendor-specific workaround is provided in the supplied content.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply Microsoft's security update for CVE-2026-40398 to all affected Windows systems. The supplied content states affected platforms include Windows Server 2012 through Windows Server 2025 and Windows 10 through Windows 11 26H1. Prioritize patching systems where Remote Desktop Services is present and where untrusted or low-privileged users can obtain interactive access.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

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.

VendorProductType
Microsoft CorporationWindowsoperating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 10 1607operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 10 1809operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 10 21h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 10 22h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 11 23h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 11 24h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 11 25h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows 11 26h1operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2012operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2012 R2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2016operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2019operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2022operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2022 23h2operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 2025operating_system
Microsoft CorporationWindows Server 23h2operating_system

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.