Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessGain physical access to device
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DeliveryMount crafted ReFS volume
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ExploitTrigger stack buffer overflow in ReFS
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ExecutionBypass Windows security feature
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ImpactTamper with protected integrity state
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V15 - Secure Coding and Architecture Stack buffer bounds checking
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Execution The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires direct physical access to the target device (AV:P) - the attacker must be able to present attacker-controlled ReFS-formatted storage to the Windows Resilient File System driver, such as by attaching or mounting a malicious volume. Exploitation is further limited by high attack complexity (AC:H), meaning the overflow is not reliably triggerable and depends on specific conditions the attacker cannot fully control. The affected component is ReFS specifically, which is not the default filesystem on Windows client systems, narrowing the realistic attack surface to systems where ReFS volumes are mounted. No authentication is required (PR:N) and no user interaction is needed (UI:N), but the physical-access prerequisite makes remote or scaled exploitation infeasible. |
| Impact | This is a low-priority, high-barrier vulnerability despite being a stack-based buffer overflow (CWE-121). The CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N, base 4.2) is internally consistent and signals the practical difficulty: AV:P requires the attacker to have physical access to the device, and AC:H means success depends on conditions outside the attacker's control (e.g., winning a race or specific memory/disk state). All exploitation signals agree on low risk: there is no KEV listing (confirmed actively exploited = no), no public POC identified, and CISA's SSVC decision framework rates Exploitation as 'none', Automatable as 'no', and Technical Impact as 'partial'. No EPSS score was provided in the input. The only notable impact is to integrity (I:H) via a security-feature bypass - confidentiality and availability are untouched (C:N/A:N), consistent with SSVC 'partial' technical impact. There is no conflict between the signals: a physical-access, high-complexity, integrity-only bug with no exploitation evidence is a genuinely low operational priority, suitable for routine patching cycles rather than emergency response. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker with hands-on physical possession of a target machine (e.g., a lost, stolen, or seized device) attaches or mounts a specially crafted ReFS-formatted volume, triggering a stack-based buffer overflow in the ReFS parsing code to bypass a Windows security feature and tamper with integrity-protected state. The high attack complexity (AC:H) means the attacker must satisfy specific conditions to reliably trigger the overflow. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Oct 14, 2026
Stack-based buffer overflow in the Windows Resilient File System (ReFS) driver allows an unauthenticated attacker with direct physical access to a device - for example by attaching or mounting an attacker-controlled ReFS-formatted volume - to corrupt kernel memory and bypass a security feature, resulting in a high integrity impact with no loss of confidentiality or availability. The assessed vector (AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N) makes remote or scaled exploitation infeasible: the attacker must be physically present and the overflow is not reliably triggerable, and CISA's SSVC evaluation records no exploitation activity and no automatable path. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis.
RemediationAI
Vendor-released patch: Microsoft has published an update for this issue through the Microsoft Security Response Center (https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-70116); per the EUVD build ranges, apply the security update that brings affected systems to at least 10.0.28000.3231 (Windows 11 26H1), 10.0.26100.9711 (Windows 11 24H2), 10.0.26300.9711 (Windows 11 26H2), 10.0.26200.9711 (Windows 11 25H2), or 10.0.26100.33650 (Windows Server 2025 and Server Core), or a later cumulative build on the respective servicing branch. Because the prerequisite is physical access to present a malicious ReFS volume, the strongest compensating controls are physical and procedural: restrict unescorted physical access to servers and endpoints, and enforce policy that untrusted USB or removable storage is never mounted on production systems - noting the operational cost that this blocks legitimate removable-media workflows and requires alternative transfer channels. Where ReFS is not required, do not create or mount ReFS/Dev Drive volumes, and where untrusted media must be inspected, do so on an isolated, non-production host with ReFS support disabled so the driver cannot be reached - the trade-off is loss of ReFS-specific functionality such as integrity streams, block cloning and Dev Drive performance on those hosts. Disk encryption such as BitLocker does not mitigate this class of flaw, since the attacker supplies the malicious volume rather than reading the protected one, and because no exploit code has been observed, emergency out-of-band response is not warranted; schedule the update through normal patch cycles.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 6 packages in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
The vulnerability is a stack-based buffer overflow (CWE-121) in the kernel-mode driver that implements Microsoft's Resilient File System (ReFS), a copy-on-write, integrity-checking filesystem introduced with Windows Server 2012 and now also usable on Windows 11 client SKUs (notably for Dev Drive volumes). The flaw is reachable only when ReFS parses attacker-controlled on-disk metadata from a volume the attacker supplies, which is why the CVSS vector carries the physical-access metric AV:P rather than a network or adjacent metric; the high complexity rating (AC:H) reflects that the overflow depends on specific structural conditions in the crafted volume that the attacker cannot fully control. No authentication (PR:N) or user interaction (UI:N) is required once the media is mounted, and scope is unchanged (S:U) with integrity impact only (I:H) - the assessed impact class is a security-feature bypass rather than code execution or data disclosure. The attack surface is naturally constrained because ReFS is not the default filesystem on Windows client installations, which default to NTFS; exposure is concentrated on Windows Server 2025 deployments and on client or server systems where ReFS or Dev Drive volumes are actively mounted. No CPE strings were supplied with this record; affected build ranges are taken from the ENISA EUVD entry (EUVD-2026-99687).
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Severity by source
AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Physical access to present a malicious ReFS volume (AV:P) and unreliable triggering give AC:H; no auth needed (PR:N); a security-feature bypass yields I:H with C:N/A:N.
Primary rating from Vendor (microsoft).
CVSS VectorVendor: microsoft
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
Stack-based buffer overflow in Windows Resilient File System (ReFS) allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature with a physical attack.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
A buffer overflow occurs when a program writes more data to a memory buffer than it was allocated to hold, causing the excess data to spill into adjacent memory regions.
A stack-based buffer overflow occurs when a program writes more data to a buffer located on the stack than it was allocated to hold.
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EUVD-2026-99687
GHSA-9jc3-pgpm-m2g7
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB