CVE-2026-96251
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-96251 is a high-severity Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision (CWE-807) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Security Account Manager (T1003.002); ranked at the 44th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-100219
Vulnerability Data
Reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision in Microsoft PowerShell allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 1 hardening rule · 1 OS baseline
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Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Explicitly requires that every access decision be based on authoritative, protected decision data rather than caller-supplied inputs.
Access enforcement requires decisions to be made from trusted policy data rather than modifiable client-supplied inputs.
Information-flow enforcement applies rules to validated, internal attributes instead of untrusted external values.
Input validation can reject malformed or attacker-controlled values before they reach a security decision point.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Proper management of identities/credentials reduces the chance that security decisions will be driven by untrusted inputs.
Strong authentication mechanisms directly prevent security decisions from depending on modifiable, untrusted inputs.
Verification and protection of identity assertions stops reliance on attacker-controlled values for authorization decisions.
Policy-driven, least-privilege authorization reduces opportunities to bypass controls via tampered inputs.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Monitoring can detect exploitation but does not stop the underlying weakness.
Application security requirements explicitly call for validation of inputs used in security decisions.
A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles including 'distrust input from external applications', 'least privilege', 'default deny', 'fail securely', zero-trust 'never trust and always verify', end-to-end request encryption, and contextual validation of every request; these directly stop untrusted inputs from influencing security decisions even if the weakness is coded, leaving only a bounded remainder (e.g. non-request decisions or misimplemented principles).
Secure coding standards directly prohibit using untrusted inputs for security-critical decisions.
Security testing in development catches input-validation flaws before deployment.
A.8.3's core (access restriction per policies, identity/group controls, isolation, dynamic techniques with auth/encryption/time-bound rules) directly stops untrusted inputs from influencing security decisions for most instances of CWE-807; the bounded remainder is cases where the decision uses an input outside any access control point (e.g. purely client-side or pre-enforcement computation).