MSRC-CVE-2026-21517 — Windows App for Mac Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Summary

Impact: Elevation of Privilege. Microsoft rating: Important. Not known to be exploited — Exploitation Less Likely. Customer action: Required.

Details

According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to carefully time their actions to exploit the timing differences in the execution of specific operations.

Security updates
11.3.2 — https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=868963

Vulnerabilities 1

Medium 4.7

CVE-2026-21517

Windows App for Mac Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows App for Mac allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.

Microsoft Windows App for Mac Windows

Feb 10, 2026

Revision history

2026-02-13 #2
Download links fixed
2026-02-10 #1
Information published.

References

CVE-2026-21517 Windows App for Mac Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability - HTML
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-21517
Microsoft Exploitability Index
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/exploitability-index?rtc=1
Microsoft Support Lifecycle
https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
Common Vulnerability Scoring System
https://www.first.org/cvss