Description

Use after free in Windows Autopilot allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.0",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-11T17:18:57.310Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-11T17:18:57.310Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is classified as a Use-After-Free (UAF) memory corruption flaw affecting Windows Autopilot. The weakness enables an authorized local attacker to elevate privileges on targeted systems, transitioning from standard user execution to higher privileged execution contexts. The risk implication of this flaw is significant, as local privilege escalation typically facilitates system compromise, persistence establishment, and security controls bypass within enterprise environments. Exploitation requires the attacker to possess prior authorization or initial local access to the system, meaning unauthenticated remote attackers cannot leverage this vulnerability directly over the network. The flaw stems from improper management of dynamic memory allocations within the vulnerable component, where a dangling pointer is referenced after the underlying memory has been deallocated. Successful exploitation relies on precise heap manipulation to reclaim the freed memory region with attacker-controlled data, thereby achieving arbitrary code execution or privilege elevation through the execution flow of the affected process. Remediation requires applying official vendor patches or updates specific to Windows Autopilot as provided by Microsoft.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the memory management handling of Windows Autopilot, specifically manifesting as a Use-After-Free (UAF) condition. A Use-After-Free flaw occurs when an application continues to use a pointer after the memory address it references has been freed or deallocated. In the context of Windows Autopilot, certain object lifecycles are not properly synchronized or tracked, leaving references to heap-allocated objects active after destruction.\nThe attack flow begins with an authorized local attacker executing code on the target Windows system. Because the attacker requires local access and authorization, the threat model assumes low-privileged execution to start. The attacker interacts with the vulnerable component of Windows Autopilot, triggering a sequence of operations that causes the application to release a specific heap object while retaining a dangling pointer to that memory address.\nFollowing the deallocation, the attacker performs heap feng-shui or heap grooming techniques. This involves allocating and freeing various objects of similar sizes to manipulate the heap layout and ensure that the newly allocated memory occupies the exact address space previously held by the freed Autopilot object. The attacker then populates this reclaimed memory chunk with crafted data that mirrors expected object structures, including function pointers or virtual method table (vtable) entries.\nWhen the application subsequently attempts to reference the dangling pointer, it interacts with the attacker-controlled data rather than the legitimate object structure. If the program executes a function pointer derived from this corrupted structure, execution flow is redirected to instructions supplied by the attacker. Due to the privilege context in which the vulnerable Windows Autopilot component operates, this redirection results in local privilege escalation, allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on the underlying operating system."
}