CVE-2016-3309
Actively exploited. CVE-2016-3309 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-15) — exploitation has been observed in the wild, and US federal agencies are required to remediate it under BOD 22-01. Treat patching as urgent.
Public exploit code is available. Proof-of-concept or working exploit code for CVE-2016-3309 is indexed in Exploit-DB and GitHub PoC. Expect opportunistic scanning and exploitation attempts — prioritize remediation.
A privilege escalation vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel fails to properly handle objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode.
CSIRTS triage
- What
- A privilege escalation vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel fails to properly handle objects in memory.
- Who is affected
- All deployments of Windows using the affected kernel.
- Urgency
- Remediation is urgent due to active exploitation and critical severity.
- Action
- Apply the latest security patch from Microsoft.
AI-assisted analysis generated from the source advisory — verify against the original.
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Exploitation outlook
- Exploitation confirmedAlready exploited in the wild (CISA KEV) — the prediction phase is over. Patch now. Riskier than 97% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Exploit availability
Public exploit or proof-of-concept code for CVE-2016-3309 is indexed in these free datasets. Available exploit code raises real-world risk independent of the CVSS score.
- Exploit-DBA public exploit is published in the Exploit-DB archive.look it up ↗
- GitHub PoCPublic proof-of-concept repositories on GitHub reference this CVE.look it up ↗
Advisory coverage (1)
- criticalexploitedCVE-2016-3309: Microsoft Windows Kernel Privilege Escalation Vulnerabilitycisa-kev · 2022-03-15
External references
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