New GreatXML Exploit Bypasses Windows BitLocker via Recovery Partition XML Files
Jun 11, 2026
Endpoint Security / Vulnerability
Security researcher Chaotic Eclipse (aka Nightmare-Eclipse and MSNightmare) has released a new Windows BitLocker bypass dubbed GreatXML , a day after they published an exploit for Microsoft Defender. "This was an accidental discovery, it took a total of 4 hours to find this," the researcher said in a post on Blogger. "If you ever attempted to use Windows Defender Offline Scan, you're automatically vulnerable to a BitLocker bypass. I'm unsure if you can still trigger the bug without ever using the offline scan feature, because you can definitely." The exploit works as follows - Copy an XML file ("unattend.xml") and a recovery folder containing another XML file ("Recovery/WindowsRE/ReAgent.xml) to the root of the recovery partition. Reboot to Windows Recovery Environment ( WinRE ) by holding Shift while clicking Restart in the Windows power menu. If every step is followed correctly, the result is a shell spawned with unrestricte...
