Public PoC Released for Windows NT OS Kernel Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Public proof-of-concept exploit code for CVE-2026-42980 — a Windows NT OS Kernel local privilege escalation due to an integer underflow — has been published by a researcher. The PoC targets a WMI-related kernel path and can enable an attacker with low-privileged local access to escalate to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM; Microsoft released a patch and administrators are urged to apply updates, verify deployment, restrict local logons, and enforce application allow-listing.