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Researcher creates workaround for Microsoft Defender security patch
Just weeks after Microsoft patched a critical hole in Microsoft Defender, a cybersecurity researcher has posted an apparent workaround that provides system-level control to attackers once they gain any level of access.
The researcher, who goes by the name Nightmare Eclipse, has been engaged in a long-running battle with Microsoft Security.
Nightmare Eclipse has not provided the further details we requested, however Microsoft sent a brief statement, saying, “Microsoft is aware of the reported vulnerability and is actively investigating the validity and potential applicability of these claims,” and reiterating its commitment to investigating issues and supporting coordinated disclosure.
But the proof of concept (PoC) security workaround, ShieldBreak, described by Nightmare Eclipse in a series of public posts, potentially threatens to be more damaging than earlier workarounds.
Like other recently reported vulnerabilities, ShieldBreak requires an attacker to first somehow gain system access, typically via a successful phishing scam. Once in, however, the attacker can gain full admin/root access.
But there is a troubling psychological component to ShieldBreak, in that it is a workaround for a recently posted security patch from Microsoft, noted Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence. The problem is that CISOs who have already deployed that patch might feel protected when they are not.
“This one is concerning because the patch bypass directly calls the integrity of the remediation into question,” he said. “ShieldBreak appears to demonstrate that an attacker can bypass the fix Microsoft shipped for CVE-2026-50656 and ultimately obtain system-level privileges on the endpoint. That is an important distinction for enterprise defenders, because organizations may believe they have already remediated the underlying vulnerability. A successful patch bypass means the exposure can persist even after the normal vulnerability-management process says the system is protected.”
Greis added that such workarounds can reduce overall trust in official patches.
“When public proof of concept code can bypass it, the CISO’s question becomes ‘have we actually removed the exposure?’ rather than simply ‘have we deployed the patch?’,” he said. “From an architecture perspective, organizations should be very careful about allowing the same security product to become both the control being relied upon and the only source of evidence that the control is working.”
Flavio Villanustre, CISO for the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group, said he was especially concerned about the timing of the PoC’s release, given that it seemed to be intended to put the most pressure on Microsoft, given its typical timing for security patches.
“This vulnerability, if valid, would need a fix from Microsoft, but because those patches are usually only released on the second Tuesday of the month and the security researcher seems to have carefully timed the release of the PoC, we may have this exposure for another 4 weeks unless Microsoft deems this a very high severity risk, which is unlikely,” he pointed out.
Cybersecurity consultant Brian Levine, executive director of FormerGov, agreed that CISOs should not underestimate the damage potential if this PoC proves valid.
“What makes it dangerous is what it does once they’re in: it turns an ordinary low-privilege account into full system control by abusing Defender itself, the security tool running at the highest privilege on the box,” he said. “An exploit that lives inside your antivirus is quiet, it’s trusted, and it can be used to blind or disable the very thing you’re counting on to catch the intruder. It’s not a worm, but it’s a near-ideal second stage for ransomware crews and anyone doing hands-on-keyboard intrusion.”
Levine suggested that CISOs not wait for a Microsoft fix, but immediately take an aggressive defensive stance.
“Assume it’s live and lean on defense in depth, because this is exactly the scenario where treating Defender as your only line fails you. Application allowlisting, such as WDAC or AppLocker in enforced mode, is the strongest hardening available and can stop the payload even if the race succeeds,” Levine said.
“Tighten local admin rights and least privilege so a foothold has less to escalate from. And give your hunters one very specific thing to watch for: an interactive shell or scripting host running as system whose parent process is Defender’s engine, MsMpEng.exe. That should never happen in a healthy environment and it’s a high-fidelity sign someone is running this.”
But he also suggested that CISOs not assume that the PoC necessarily works as advertised.
“This is a single researcher’s proof of concept. It hasn’t been independently verified, and it’s coming from someone in the middle of a very public and very bitter fight with Microsoft, so perhaps some of the theater around it should be discounted,” Levine said. “But you can’t wave it away either. Patch bypasses are extremely common, and the claim that Microsoft’s fix for RoguePlanet didn’t fully close the door is entirely plausible. Defenders should treat it as credible until proven otherwise, not the reverse.”
Although Levine and other analysts were initially dubious, there are now indications that the PoC’s effectiveness has been independently verified.
Cybersecurity and risk advisor Steven Eric Fisher, a former cybersecurity risk specialist at Walmart, said, “I’ve seen independent confirmation that ShieldBreak works, although its exploitation method differs materially from the original RoguePlanet exploit. RoguePlanet relied on a filesystem race condition, while ShieldBreak appears to use a different Defender/Cloud Filter API path,” Fisher said. “So while it is being characterized as a bypass of Microsoft’s CVE-2026-50656 fix, it is not simply a replay of the original exploit.”
He added that cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont has already published Microsoft Defender Advanced Hunting detections for ShieldBreak that organizations can incorporate into monitoring while evaluating their exposure.
And Pieter Arntz, malware intelligence researcher at Malwarebytes, also said he has seen confirmation from a researcher he tracks, Will Dormann.
This article originally appeared on CSOonline. It has been updated with a statement from Microsoft and further confirmation of the exploit.
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IT infrastructure shortages are real and lasting. Here’s how to cope
Lead times of nine to 12 or even 18 months. Costs rising by 35%, 45%, even 50% to 200%. More than halfway through 2026, the market for IT infrastructure that’s crucial for enterprise projects, including those involving artificial intelligence, is strapped.
Memory is at the root of the shortages. Memory prices “have risen by 50% to 200%, resulting in PC prices increasing by 35% to 45% and some server prices rising over 125%,” according to Jon Forest, VP analyst at Gartner. Network switches also need memory, albeit in lesser amounts than servers, so they are not immune, with prices and lead times likewise rising dramatically.
Industry experts agree that most of the issues stem from hyperscalers gobbling up memory capacity, which trickles down to servers, storage systems, and networking devices. But while the source of the problem may be new, supply chain disruptions are far from unprecedented.
As a result, industry insiders are not short on advice on how best to deal with the situation, with tips including making better use of what you have, considering options beyond your usual scope, and lots of planning with your vendors and internal finance teams.
State of the problemJust how bad is the current supply chain problem? “It’s pretty bad,” says Matt Kimball, vice president and principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. Companies accustomed to 30- to 45-day lead times for various infrastructure are now looking at 6, 12, or even 18 months.
“It’s real, and I’m hearing it from companies of all sizes, from the 1000-server to the 10,000-server shops,” Kimball says.
“Memory costs are expected to rise sharply well into 2027 and will reach up to 25% of network hardware expenses by the end of 2027,” according to an email Gartner’s Forest sent to Network World. The figure below shows the timeline Gartner expects for memory prices, and Forest notes that the same timing applies across networking, storage, and compute infrastructure.
Gartner
“Enterprise network equipment pricing is projected to increase by over 20% in 2026. This upward trend is anticipated to continue with a further rise of 3% to 5% entering 2027, with no signs of price reduction until the end of 2027.”
But “reduction” will likely look more like “stabilization.”
“That’s something a lot of people don’t like to talk about. But let’s say prices went up 40%, they may come down five,” says Phillip Privett, senior vice president of vendor management with the global distributor and value-added reseller TD SYNNEX. “They’re not going to come down 40%.”
Perhaps worse, compared with past disruptions caused by issues such as fires in chip fabrication factories or the Covid pandemic, Kimball says this one is “durable” because its cause—the AI wave—is more long-lasting and just getting started.
“This AI inference wave we’re hitting is just beginning. It’s going to be longer and bigger than the training wave,” he says. “It’s impacting everything, from AI infrastructure to the traditional stuff that’s standing up your virtualization and cloud infrastructure.”
No vendors seem to be immune, not even the likes of Cisco, which makes its own Cisco Silicon One chips. Or, at least, it designs the chips; they’re actually manufactured by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the same company that makes many of the other chips that are in such demand. And that’s only one component of many that comprise a switch.
On the other hand, the margins Cisco gets from enterprise sales are far greater than those from hyperscalers because Cisco sells mainly just hardware to hyperscalers, whereas enterprise sales generally include software and services as well. So, Cisco has incentive to keep enterprise customers happy and maintain the 66% margins it reported in Q3, its latest quarter.
Still, Cisco must deal with the same shortages as other vendors.
“I wouldn’t say any company is faring better than others,” says Neil Anderson, vice president and CTO for cloud, infrastructure, and AI solutions at World Wide Technology (WWT). “There may be nuances that some suppliers are employing to balance it to some extent, but I fail to recognize a supplier that’s not having almost the same issue.”
Cloud storage vendor Backblaze is one company that’s facing equipment cost and availability issues. “There are different types of shortages occurring in multiple places, all driven by unusual market demands, really by just a handful of very large buyers,” says James Rowell, senior vice president of operations with Backblaze.
Backblaze is constantly forecasting and monitoring demand triggers, Rowell says. That involves close alignment with the sales team to forecast client needs, as well as paying attention to historical trendlines to predict upcoming demand from new deals and growth with existing clients. But the company also looks for “unnatural market-related triggers” that would cause a spike in utilization.
With hyperscalers buying up vast amounts of capacity, “This is definitely an unnatural phase,” Rowell says. “For about for the last 12 months, I would say there’s been somewhere between a 15% and 30% uptick in costs,” especially in terms of servers and compute disks.
On the positive side, at least for Backblaze, the company is also seeing an uptick in business from an interesting source: AI companies. “We reported in the last earnings period a 70% increase in AI companies using our platform,” says Patrick Thomas, vice president of marketing at Backblaze. “That’s massive.”
On top of that, the company is seeing an uptick in deals from enterprises that can’t get the storage capacity they need or want on-prem. “There’s a general market nervousness where we’ve got potential deals coming our way because those organizations are concerned about being able to do it themselves,” Rowell says.
While some expect new chip fabrication plants currently under construction will ease memory supply constraints, Privett doesn’t buy it. “I don’t see it getting better anytime soon,” he says. “Building a new fab is a two-year process.”
Advice: Start with the basicsEnterprises, then, must play the cards they’re dealt. For Moore Insights’ Kimball, who did stints as an IT exec with the states of Florida and Oregon, that starts with making the most of what you have.
Such a strategy is “shockingly not implemented much” across the companies he sees. “A simple capacity planning exercise can free up a lot of resources.” That includes virtualized servers running at just 20% to 30% utilization as well as extending the life of existing servers. While 15 or 20 years ago it was common to refresh every four years or so, companies can often get six or seven years out of today’s servers.
While such strategies won’t solve your AI compute challenges, they can certainly help support your ongoing operations and free up budget for AI and other modernization projects, he says.
“Sweat your assets,” agrees Privett of TD SYNNEX. “Work them as much as you can, add only what you need, get extensions on your licensing, renewals on your services agreements and things like that. Just sweat it out a little longer.”
If you have budget to spend but can’t get the hardware you’re after, buy something else, says WWT’s Anderson. “Look at things that are not tied to those components, like software projects or SaaS licensing,” he says.
Get friendly with finance teamsNumerous experts recommend regular meetings with your CFO or finance teams to keep them apprised of what you’re up against so the company can plan accordingly.
Gartner’s Forest advises using rolling 12- to 24‑month forecasts and engaging early with suppliers to identify constrained components and SKUs. Committing to quarterly or monthly buys can help you avoid long-term agreements that extend past the rapid increases we’re seeing in 2026, he says.
Also engage with the financing arm of your equipment vendors, some of which are offering financing incentives, Privett says. Compute vendors in particular are offering subsidized financing, deferred payments, and low-cost financing for the first year or so. “Those are huge opportunities to take advantage of,” he says.
By engaging with finance teams, IT groups can conduct budget allocation exercises and try to come up with ways to make the financials work. The last thing you want to do is surprise them with additional budget requests out of the blue.
Kimball recalls his days with the state of Florida, when all budget requests were examined by a technical review working group—which was designed to be hostile.
“I can’t imagine going to them and saying, ‘Oh, did I say that was a million dollars? It’s actually $2 million. I need you to write me a bigger check,’” he says. “I would walk into one of the swamps in Tallahassee and get eaten by the alligators instead of doing that.”
Work with your vendors and VARsAs you put plans together, lean on your vendors for help, including channel partners such as value-added resellers (VAR) and national resellers. “Work with them to map things out and understand what your workloads will look like,” Kimball says.
That’s what Backblaze’s Rowell regularly does with his suppliers. He lays out his forecast for the year, with commitments on what Backblaze will definitely buy, as well as scenarios that account for rapid growth, say, 2x. “And they’ll come back with, ‘Well, okay, no problem,’ or maybe they say we need to put in an allocation right away, or we won’t be able to get what we may need,” he says.
Similarly, he sits down with his CFO regularly to map out predictive models that factor in inflation, price hikes, and the like. The idea is to plan out multiple scenarios, so you don’t get blindsided.
“If you don’t do that, you’ll get caught with your pants down, on the upside-down end of spectrum,” he said – meaning not having the capacity to take advantage of market opportunities.
Acquiring the capacity you need to meet project demand may also mean being flexible in terms of your equipment choices. If you’re a Dell shop but can’t get Dell servers, maybe you go with Lenovo, Kimball says.
“You’ve got to figure out how to use all this silicon and infrastructure in a heterogenous way to serve your needs,” he says. That’s especially true when it comes to AI infrastructure. “If you think you’re going to go with 100% Nvidia for everything from RAG [retrieval augmented generation] to inferencing at the edge, you’re kind of crazy, not because of cost but because of availability.”
Look at alternatives, including AMD and cloud solutions, while staying mindful of how it all plays together. You may not be able to get Nvidia GPUs, but AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud have them, Kimball notes.
Be strategic, perhaps by using cloud offerings to handle certain tuning or inference workloads, then bringing them back in-house when appropriate. “Have a better understanding of what absolutely has to be on prem and what can be in the cloud,” he says.
That’s good advice, says Backblaze’s Thomas. When it comes to AI, think about performance tiers and the range of use cases you have. They don’t all need top-tier performance.
“People get wrapped around axle of needing the top end. There’s a lot of flexibility in the edges, innovation in different hardware and software,” Thomas says.
Gartner likewise advises companies to increase configuration flexibility and expand sourcing paths. That may include buying from secondary markets and lease-return programs to preserve continuity with existing infrastructure until the shortages pass, Forest says.
Get started somewhereEven if you can’t acquire or have to wait for the infrastructure you need, don’t let that keep you from getting started with AI or other modernization projects.
Options include public cloud and neocloud providers, Anderson says. WWT also provides capacity in its own lab so customers can get started with proof-of-concept projects. “Don’t just throw your hands up. We can help you find access to capacity,” Anderson says. “Production-scale AI may be delayed, but don’t let that derail your strategy.”
Colocation providers may likewise be an option, especially if enterprises are struggling to acquire high-end networking equipment. Networking is a key value proposition for colocation providers, in that they have built-in connections to various cloud providers and other ecosystem players.
Equinix, for example, has 280 data centers in 77 metropolitan areas, says Phil Read, senior director, colocation product management for the company. If you have the compute infrastructure, Equinix can help you with the high-end connectivity required both intra- data center and at edge facilities.
It also has partnerships with the likes of Cisco and Nvidia for “ready-to-go AI connectivity,” Read says. That means Equinix offers the right infrastructure to meet the requirements of high-end compute solutions in terms of power density and cooling. Such power densities are significant, requiring 120k VA per rack and up. “There’s plenty of talk about a megawatt rack,” he says.
Power is a significant issue in this entire discussion, Privett says. Older installed computing infrastructure likely consumes far more power than newer systems, which is an argument for upgrading as soon as possible.
“If you modernize today, you could substantially reduce the number of servers needed to support the same applications at a much lower power consumption rate,” Privett says. He advises sitting down with folks from the OT side of the house to make sure power is available for whatever you want to do. In many areas, power is at a premium.
If your plans include installing GPU environments in your own data center, WWT advises you not to delay. “We’re telling customers, you need to talk with us and get that designed, get that ordered, because it will take quite a bit of time until it actually ships and we’re able to install it,” Anderson says.
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