CVE-2026-20930
Published: 14 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-20930 is a high-severity Race Condition (CWE-362) vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 10 21H2. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 12.4th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-25 (Reference Monitor) and AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Prevents unauthorized and unintended information transfer via shared system resources, directly mitigating race conditions from improper synchronization in Windows Management Services.
Implements a reference monitor that mediates all access to system resources with sufficient assurance, countering race condition-based privilege escalation by ensuring tamper-proof enforcement.
Enforces least privilege for users and processes, limiting the ability of low-privilege local attackers to exploit the race condition for escalation.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Race condition in Windows Management Services directly enables local privilege escalation from low-privileged context (T1068).
NVD Description
Concurrent execution using shared resource with improper synchronization ('race condition') in Windows Management Services allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-20930 is a race condition vulnerability (CWE-362) stemming from concurrent execution using a shared resource with improper synchronization in Windows Management Services. This flaw affects Windows systems and was published on 2026-04-14T18:16:43.393 with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H).
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability due to its high attack complexity (AC:H), requiring no user interaction (UI:N). Successful exploitation allows privilege escalation with a changed scope (S:C), resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Microsoft's advisory provides details on mitigation and patches at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-20930.
Details
- CWE(s)