Windows Exploitation Techniques: Dangling COM Object Registrations
This short blog post is about abusing a privilege escalation bug that Microsoft recently fixed in Windows, CVE-2026-66804, that I and 14 others reported. This issue is an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-50343, a bug dubbed “Dark Elevator” by Calif. The root cause of the bug was a dangling COM object registration for the CrossDevice COM object with the CLSID {E9F83CF2-E0C0-4CA7-AF01-E90C70BEF496}. A COM registration typically needs two parts: a server executable, which for in-process components is a DLL and a CLSID entry under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry key which points to that DLL.
- Vendor
- Microsoft
- Fix
- available
Why it ranks 21 (Routine)
- Covered by 3 independent sources
- Fix available
- Threat research
- Recency: items published within 24 hours gain 15, within 72 hours 6, within 7 days 2.
Links
- Google Project Zero (projectzero.google)
- CVE-2026-66804 on this site · NVD · CVE.org · Vulnpedia
- CVE-2026-50343 on this site · NVD · CVE.org · Vulnpedia
Related coverage
Other items that share a CVE or were clustered with this one.