Description

Null pointer dereference in Microsoft Remote Registry Service allows an authorized attacker to deny service over a network.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-11T17:18:08.547Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-11T17:18:08.547Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is classified as a null pointer dereference affecting the Microsoft Remote Registry Service. The primary impact of successful exploitation is a denial of service condition, rendering the affected service unavailable to legitimate users and systems. The vulnerability resides within the Microsoft Remote Registry Service, which handles remote registry configuration and manipulation over a network.\nThe risk implication is service disruption, potentially impacting administrative workflows, monitoring capabilities, and centralized management functions that rely on remote registry interactions. An attacker must possess network access to the target system and appropriate authorization to interact with the service. Exploitation does not inherently grant remote code execution based on the provided data, but reliably triggers an unhandled null pointer exception that terminates the service daemon or process, causing an immediate denial of service.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of the vulnerability is a failure to properly validate pointers or references within the code handling remote registry requests in the Microsoft Remote Registry Service. Specifically, when processing a maliciously crafted or unexpected network input sequence, the application attempts to dereference a memory address that evaluates to NULL.\nThe vulnerable component is the Microsoft Remote Registry Service binary or associated RPC interface handlers responsible for parsing incoming remote registry procedure calls over network protocols. Exploitation occurs over a network vector where an authorized attacker transmits specially crafted requests to the target service. Upon receipt, the vulnerable function attempts to access a pointer that has not been initialized or has been prematurely freed, resulting in an immediate access violation exception.\nBecause the exception occurs within a critical service process and is left unhandled, the operating system's error-handling mechanisms terminate the process to maintain system stability, causing a denial of service. The attack requires network exposure, meaning the service must be reachable via the network interface, and necessitates that the attacker is authorized to communicate with the service. Privilege requirements involve authenticated access or meeting the baseline authorization checks enforced by the remote registry interface. The post-exploitation impact is strictly confined to service availability degradation, forcing a service restart or system reboot to restore normal remote registry functionality."
}