MICROSOFT recently acknowledged a vulnerability in its Defender software, tracked as CVE-2026-50656, which could allow for privilege escalation, with a CVSS score of 7.8. This vulnerability, called 'RoguePlanet', was disclosed by researcher Nightmare Eclipse, who also provided a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating local privilege escalation on Windows systems. Microsoft is working on a security update and has already patched earlier exploits from the same researcher.
The advisory highlights ongoing tensions regarding Microsoft's vulnerability disclosure practices, with previous exploits like BlueHammer and RedSun also being discussed.