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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2026-96951 — Microsoft

HIGH

CVE-2026-96951 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-77 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-10-13) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command ('command injection') in Windows Shell allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network.

Published
Updated
Affected
15 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 14, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-10-13. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-10-16.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2026-96951.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs74th percentile — riskier than 74% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2026-96951 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 386,684 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command ('command injection') in Windows Shell allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network.

Affected Products

15 products · 26 configurations
Application
outlook webmicrosoft
all
OS
windows 10 21h2microsoft
< 10.0.19044.7807
range
OS
windows 10 22h2microsoft
< 10.0.19045.7807
range
OS
windows 10 1607microsoft
< 10.0.14393.9612
range
OS
windows 10 1809microsoft
< 10.0.17763.9376
range
OS
windows 11 23h2microsoft
< 10.0.22631.7652
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability

  1. Detect

    Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).

  2. Remediation status

    No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-96951 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command ('command injection') in Windows Shell allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network.
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Actively Exploited: CVE-2026-96951: Microsoft (High 8.8)