Microsoft Security Update Guide · Defender

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for Mac Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Microsoft · EN CVE-2026-56178 Important Action required CVSS 5.5

Published

What does this mean?

  • Elevation of Privilege. An attacker can gain more rights than they should have, for example admin rights.
  • It can be exploited with access to the device itself, with an ordinary user account and without any user action.
  • CVSS 5.5 out of 10: medium. Microsoft rates it Important.
  • No attacks reported; Microsoft expects exploitation to be less likely.
  • What should you do? Install the security update for the version you run (or a later cumulative update):
    • Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for Mac: KBRelease Notes 101.26042.0020

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint · Elevation of Privilege

Time-of-check time-of-use (toctou) race condition in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.

Defender

Key facts

Released
14 jul 2026
Impact
Elevation of Privilege
Max severity
Important
Weakness
CVSS 3.1
5.5 / 4.8 (base / temporal)
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Publicly disclosed
No
Exploited
No
Exploitability assessment
Exploitation Less Likely
Customer action required
Yes
Links

CVSS metrics

Base score metrics
Attack VectorLocal
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityNone
Temporal score metrics
Exploit Code MaturityUnproven
Remediation LevelOfficial Fix
Report ConfidenceConfirmed

Affected products and updates

ProductUpdateBuild
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for MacKBRelease Notes · Security Update101.26042.0020

Revisions

VersionDateNote
114 jul 2026Information published.

View at Microsoft → ← All security advisories

Source: Microsoft Security Update Guide. 365Fanatic is not affiliated with Microsoft.