Summary
Impact: Remote Code Execution. Microsoft rating: Critical. Not known to be exploited — Exploitation Unlikely. Customer action: Required.
Details
How could an attacker exploit the vulnerability?
An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted DNS response to a vulnerable Windows system, causing the DNS Client to incorrectly process the response and corrupt memory. In certain configurations, this could allow the attacker to run code remotely on the affected system without authentication.
Security updates
10.0.26100.32860 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5087539
10.0.26100.32772 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5087423
10.0.26200.8457 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5089549
10.0.26200.8390 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5089466
10.0.22631.7079 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5087420
10.0.22631.7219 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5093998
10.0.25398.2330 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5087541
10.0.28000.2113 — https://support.microsoft.com/help/5089548
Vulnerabilities 1
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Critical 9.8CVE-2026-41096 Public exploit
Windows DNS Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Heap-based buffer overflow in Microsoft Windows DNS allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network.
Revision history
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#1
Information published.
References
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CVE-2026-41096 Windows DNS Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability - HTML
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-41096
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Microsoft Exploitability Index
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/exploitability-index?rtc=1
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Microsoft Support Lifecycle
https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
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Common Vulnerability Scoring System
https://www.first.org/cvss