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 content, the flaw is rooted in improper link resolution before file access and is exploited via a time-of-check to time-of-use race condition in Defender's file-handling/scanning workflow. Defender verifies or opens a file path and later reopens or acts on that path; an attacker can win the race by substituting the checked object with a malicious file or link target between those operations. Public proof-of-concept reporting indicates successful exploitation can cause Defender, which runs as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM, to launch attacker-controlled code such as a SYSTEM command prompt. The issue has been reported as affecting fully patched Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems at the time of disclosure.
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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 valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 1 candidate as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.
All candidate exploits were filtered out by Mallory's validation.
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
81 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A privilege escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Defender's Microsoft Malware Protection Engine that can grant SYSTEM-level privileges via a race condition.
A Windows Defender local privilege escalation vulnerability caused by a TOCTOU race condition in Defender's file-processing workflow, allowing execution with SYSTEM-level privileges.
A Microsoft Defender / Microsoft Malware Protection Engine elevation-of-privilege vulnerability caused by improper link resolution and a TOCTOU race condition, allowing local low-privileged attackers to gain NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows systems.
A privilege escalation vulnerability in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine in Microsoft Defender, publicly referred to as RoguePlanet. The exploit is described as a race condition that can grant attackers a SYSTEM-level shell.
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.