Unauthenticated Deserialization RCE in Microsoft HPC Pack
CVSS 3.1
9.8critical
EPSS
2%p76
Published
()
Modified
AI analysis
CVE-2026-59124 is a deserialization of untrusted data flaw (CWE-502) in Microsoft High Performance Computing (HPC) Pack that allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. Because the vulnerable component processes untrusted serialized input, an attacker who can reach the network-facing service can send malicious serialized data and trigger arbitrary code execution without credentials or user interaction. Successful exploitation grants the attacker the ability to run code in the context of the affected service, with full confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact per the 9.8 CVSS score. Any organization running Microsoft HPC Pack on Windows — typically head nodes and management endpoints of Windows HPC clusters — is affected. As of the August 2026 Patch Tuesday release that addressed it, there is no known public proof-of-concept, no CISA KEV listing, and no confirmed exploitation in the wild, though the EPSS score of 1.7% (76th percentile) suggests a moderate near-term exploitation probability.
What to do: Apply Microsoft's August 2026 security updates for HPC Pack immediately via Windows Update or the Microsoft Update Catalog, since the flaw is remotely exploitable without authentication. Inventory your environment for HPC Pack head nodes and management services, and restrict network access to them (firewall rules, VPN, or jump hosts) until patched. Because the vector is unauthenticated network code execution, prioritize internet-facing or broadly reachable cluster endpoints when patching.
Affected
Microsoft HPC Pack (High Performance Computing Pack) on Windows
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Estimated exposure
nicheLikely thousands to low tens of thousands of exposed HPC Pack nodes/endpoints across a limited set of enterprise and academic HPC deployments (estimate; no… — HPC Pack is a specialized Windows HPC cluster orchestration product used mainly by enterprise, research, and academic compute environments rather than broadly deployed consumer software, so only a small fraction of Microsoft's install base…
Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.
Description
Deserialization of untrusted data in Microsoft High Performance Computing (HPC) Pack allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network.
Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 398 CVEs, including an actively exploited WinSock zero-day CVE-2026-68820 and wormable DNS RCE CVE-2026-62878.
Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday addresses 398 CVEs across Windows, Office, Azure, Exchange Server, SharePoint, Teams, .NET and other products, with 62 rated Critical. The actively exploited CVE-2026-68820 is a use-after-free in the Windows WinSock afd.sys driver that can yield SYSTEM privileges via a race condition. CVE-2026-62878 is a critical, wormable stack buffer overflow in Windows DNS Server allowing unauthenticated, remote code execution without user interaction. Other notable fixes include WDS TFTP RCE CVE-2026-62893, a QUIC flaw affecting roughly 13.5 million sites (CVE-2026-62815), an Exchange authentication bypass EoP demonstrated at Pwn2Own Berlin (CVE-2026-62911), and two TPM 2.0 reference implementation fixes.
Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday fixes 398 CVEs, including actively exploited Windows zero-day CVE-2026-68820 used by Lazarus for SYSTEM privilege escalation.
Microsoft's August 2026 Patch Tuesday release addresses 398 new vulnerabilities, 62 rated Critical by the Zero Day Initiative, with CVE-2026-68820 (CVSS 7.0), a use-after-free in the afd.sys Windows kernel driver, the only flaw flagged as actively exploited. Check Point Research attributed exploitation of the privilege escalation bug to Lazarus' Operation Dream Job campaign. Four unauthenticated remote code execution flaws rated 9.8 affect Windows DNS Server (CVE-2026-62878, called wormable by ZDI), Windows Deployment Services (CVE-2026-62893), Microsoft QUIC (CVE-2026-62815) and HPC Pack (CVE-2026-59124). The release also completes a two-part SharePoint fix with RCE component CVE-2026-63520, following July's authentication bypass fix CVE-2026-55040.