Description

Use after free in Application Information Services allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-11T17:18:10.473Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-11T17:18:10.473Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is classified as a Use-After-Free memory corruption flaw affecting Application Information Services. The weakness enables an authorized local attacker to execute arbitrary code and achieve local privilege escalation on targeted systems. The risk implication is significant, as a successful exploit compromises the integrity and confidentiality of the host operating system by allowing low-privileged actors to inherit elevated security contexts. The exploitation requirements dictate that the attacker must already possess local access and authorization to interact with the vulnerable service. The attack capabilities center on memory manipulation post-allocation release, resulting in potential control flow hijacking. Because the defect resides in core system information processing, remediation requires applying vendor-supplied software updates or patches specifically addressing the memory management flaw within the affected component.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of the vulnerability stems from improper memory management within Application Information Services, specifically a Use-After-Free condition. This occurs when the application references a memory pointer after the underlying buffer or object has been deallocated or freed. If the memory allocator reassigns the freed heap memory to a different object, the dangling pointer within Application Information Services can be manipulated to reference malicious data disguised as legitimate program structures.\nThe vulnerable component handles internal state management and information retrieval requests. Exploitation requires the attacker to have local access and specific authorization to interface with Application Information Services. Network exposure is typically restricted to local inter-process communication or local API boundaries, meaning remote exploitation without prior local access is not feasible under standard configurations.\nThe step-by-step attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the authorized local attacker interacts with Application Information Services to trigger a specific sequence of operations that allocates and subsequently frees a target memory object while retaining a reference pointer. Second, the attacker induces heap feng-shui or memory layout manipulation, causing the freed memory region to be reallocated with attacker-controlled payload data. Third, the application attempts to access the original object via the dangling pointer, dereferencing the malicious data instead of the expected structure. Finally, this incorrect dereference leads to a corruption of program execution flow, allowing the attacker to redirect instruction pointers to shellcode or gadget chains.\nThe post-exploitation impact includes unauthorized privilege escalation, allowing the local attacker to transition from a standard user context to a highly privileged system or administrative context. This grants complete control over the affected operating system instance, enabling further internal reconnaissance, credential theft, and persistence mechanism installation."
}