The security researcher going by the name Chaotic Eclipse (aka INFINITE NIGHTMARE, MSNightmare, and Nightmare-Eclipse) has released a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a new Microsoft zero-day called ShieldBreak.
The vulnerability, rooted in Microsoft Defender for Windows, demonstrates a patch bypass for CVE-2026-50656 (CVSS score: 7.8), otherwise known as RoguePlanet.
RoguePlanet has been described as a race condition that, if successfully exploited, could grant an attacker the ability to spawn a shell with SYSTEM-level privileges, enabling them to run arbitrary code or perform unauthorized actions.
Although it was first disclosed by the researcher in June 2026, a patch for the vulnerability was not released by Microsoft until almost a month later. The tech giant described it as a privilege escalation issue in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine ("mpengine.dll").
Soon after, Chaotic Eclipse said the "defense-in-depth updates" introduced by Microsoft to address CVE-2026-50656 can cause Defender to leak 8 bytes of data when attempting to open a file in certain scenarios on Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025. Microsoft told The Hacker News at the time that it's aware of the report and is investigating.
ShieldBreak, on the other hand, is assessed to be a full patch bypass for CVE-2026-50656, with the researcher claiming that "Microsoft has failed to properly patch the RoguePlanet vulnerability."
"The PoC was tested in the latest version of Windows 11 25h2 (+Canary channel) and Windows Server 2025, the PoC also have a 100% success rate," the researcher added. "Please note that Windows 10 (and respective server editions) are not currently supported, they are however vulnerable to ShieldBreak as well."
When contacted for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson shared the following statement with The Hacker News -
Microsoft is aware of the reported vulnerability and is actively investigating the validity and potential applicability of these claims. Microsoft is committed to investigating security issues and updating impacted products to protect customers as soon as possible. Importantly, we support coordinated vulnerability disclosure, an industry standard that protects customers and supports the research community by ensuring their findings are thoroughly investigated and addressed before being made public.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont, in a post on Mastodon, confirmed the exploit works on Windows 11, adding that the two exploits work differently.
"RoguePlanet was a filesystem race condition vuln that uses virtual disks and NT native file manipulation to trick quarantine process into overwriting system files," Beaumont noted. "ShieldBreak user-mode callback hook to change file contents during a Defender cloud-hydration scan via cfapi (Cloud Filter API)."
Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also validated ShieldBreak, stating Defender needs to be enabled for the exploit to work and that "my naive eyeballs fail to see the similarity" with RoguePlanet. Dormann explained the sequence of actions as follows -
- Plant an EICAR file
- Use Object Manager symlinks to control Defender's scan path to system32.
- During the scan, leverage CLFS to swap the identity file and hydration data to C:\Windows\system32\phoneinfo.dll (which doesn't exist by default in Windows)
- Run the QueueReporting scheduled task, which runs wermgr.exe -upload as Run with highest privileges
"In the wer.dll code, there is explicit code to load phoneinfo.dll," the researcher said. "Because at this point, phoneinfo.dll exists and is our own code, this runs, spawning conhost.exe with SYSTEM privileges. I don't recall RoguePlanet doing anything with cloud providers, CLFS, hydration anything, phoneinfo.dll, and unlike RoguePlanet, ShieldBreak seems to require Defender to be active to work."
The development comes as the Windows maker shipped patches for 421 security flaws, including 236 flaws in Windows. One of the patches involves CVE-2026-62832 (CVSS score: 7.8), a Windows User Profile Service privilege escalation vulnerability that was disclosed by Chaotic Eclipse last month under the name LegacyHive.
"Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows User Profile Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally," Microsoft said.
"An authenticated attacker who has credentials for another local account could run a specially crafted application to load another user's registry hive. Successful exploitation could allow the attacker to access or modify another user's data and gain administrator privileges. User interaction is not required."
Also remediated by Microsoft is an actively exploited zero-day in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock (CVE-2026-68820, CVSS score: 7.0) that grants SYSTEM privileges and a publicly disclosed Windows Container Isolation FS Filter Driver (unionfs.sys) tampering vulnerability (CVE-2026-72971, CVSS score: 5.5).
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has since added CVE-2026-68820 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring federal agencies to apply the fixes by August 25, 2026.
(The story was updated after publication on August 13, 2026, to include a response from Microsoft and additional insights related to the flaw.)
