About Elevation of Privilege - NT OS Kernel (CVE-2026-42980) vulnerability. Information about this vulnerability was disclosed as part of the June Microsoft Patch Tuesday on June 9. The vulnerability was not specifically highlighted in Microsoft Patch Tuesday reviews published by VM vendors. This Microsoft Windows NT OS Kernel elevation of privilege vulnerability is caused by improper handling of integer values during data construction in the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) subsystem, resulting in an out-of-bounds write. Successful exploitation allows a local attacker with low privileges (a standard user account) to escalate privileges to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. Obtaining NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privileges grants full control over the affected host, enabling an attacker to execute arbitrary commands, modify security settings, access protected data, and use the compromised host as a foothold for further lateral movement within the target environment.

🛠 On July 7, a detailed write-up describing the exploitation of this vulnerability was published. A public proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit is also available on GitHub.

👾 There is currently no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation of this vulnerability.