Threats / Microsoft / CVE-2022-26904

CVE-2022-26904 · EUVD no mirror located · GCVE no mirror located Verified 2026-09-19

Microsoft Windows vulnerability

Microsoft Windows User Profile Service privilege escalation vulnerability (CWE-362) allowing local attackers to gain elevated system privileges.

Verdict

Today item — known-exploited.

A race condition in Windows User Profile Service enables local privilege escalation. Exploitation requires local access but no user interaction. Active exploitation observed in the wild demonstrates practical attack viability.

CISA KEV Yes · 2022-04-25⁵EPSS 0.09592 (verify live)⁶CVSS 7³CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: total⁴Exploit Weaponized · public exploit · Metasploit module¹⁰

Is it exploitable?

— the evidence, ranked above the score

Reported exploitation

2 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.

covertswarm.com ↗cisa.gov ↗Confirmed

Exploited in the wild

Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-04-25).

CISA KEV ↗Confirmed

Probability (EPSS)

EPSS 0.09592 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.

FIRST EPSS ↗High

Severity / affected

CVSS 7 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:F/RL:O/RC:C) · Affected: Microsoft, Windows. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.

CVE.org ↗Reported

Weakness (CWE)

Mapped to CWE-362 Race Condition.CWE assignment from the public NVD record (may be stale); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.

NVD ↗Reported

CISA SSVC (triage disposition)

Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Technical Impact: totalCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.

CISA-ADP ↗Reported

Currency of the record

CISA added this to its KEV catalog 10 days after the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.

CISA KEV ↗CVE.org ↗Reported

Public exploit available

Public exploit tooling is catalogued for this CVE (a functional/weaponized public exploit). Catalog entries: Metasploit module. We link the catalog page(s) only — no payload or code is hosted or restated here.Link, never host — the catalog page is the source; basicsecurity.net does not redistribute payloads.

Metasploit ↗Confirmed

WeaknessCWE-362 · Race Condition

Who’s exploiting it?

— attribution turns risk into urgency

Attribution not established

No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.

Why it matters

— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board

Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1

Attacker

Gain local system access through initial compromise or valid credentials.

Business

Attacker establishes foothold on Windows endpoint within organizational network.

Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2

Attacker

Exploit race condition in User Profile Service to escalate privileges to SYSTEM level.

Business

Attacker obtains unrestricted control over compromised system and its data.

Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3

Attacker

Execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges to install persistence mechanisms.

Business

Attacker maintains long-term access and can move laterally across infrastructure.

What to do

— defensible action

Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.¹

Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.

Coverage & confidence

— what we know, and what we don’t

Established (cited)

KEV listing (CISA)

EPSS probability (FIRST)

2 reported-exploitation source(s)

CVSS 7 — CNA-assigned (CVE.org)

CISA SSVC triage disposition (CVE.org ADP)

CWE weakness mapping (NVD feed — CNA left none)

Catalogued by microsoft (CNA)

Named finder/reporter credit (CVE.org)

Coverage gaps — stated, not hidden

No EUVD / GCVE mirror in feed — single-authority dependency for the identifier.

EPSS & exposure are time-varying; verify live at the source.

Threat-actor attribution not established from feed data — absence of a name is not absence of compromise.

Disclosure & credit²

Catalogued by microsoftCNA

Credited with finding itKLINIX5finder

Found an error? Propose a correction.

A correction is a cited counter-claim — it must cite a source, gets reviewed by a second human, and is never auto-applied. See the correction convention and our identity npub1j7gt9ky7sfcrjn8jjee6693dkzvk4rahs0fk2suu7968dfns62zs3mqm3y.

With JavaScript off: publish a signed kind 1111 Nostr event tagging ["r", "https://basicsecurity.net/threat/cve-2022-26904.html"], ["v", "sha256:3a0710ff5e00d2fceccb05d94161aa7a90dd5eaa6982d4f1681faa81b4f87acf"] (the record version), plus ["src", "<your source URL>"] and ["t", "correction"], per the correction convention. Our identity: npub1j7gt9ky7sfcrjn8jjee6693dkzvk4rahs0fk2suu7968dfns62zs3mqm3y. Cite-or-die: an event with no src is a coverage finding, not a proposal.