CVE-2026-45602 — Windows 10 21h2
CRITICALCVE-2026-45602 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) CWE-349 vulnerability in microsoft windows 10 21h2. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
No cwe for this issue in Windows DHCP Server allows an unauthorized attacker to perform tampering over a network.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-45602.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-45602 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,386 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
No cwe for this issue in Windows DHCP Server allows an unauthorized attacker to perform tampering over a network.
Affected Products
windows 10 21h2microsoftwindows 10 22h2microsoftwindows 10 1607microsoftwindows 10 1809microsoftwindows 11 23h2microsoftwindows 11 24h2microsoftDetection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every microsoft windows 10 21h2 deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the microsoft windows 10 21h2 security patch or hotfix for CVE-2026-45602 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-45602 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.