CVE-2024-38080 in Windows
Summary
by MITRE • 07/09/2024
Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/27/2026
This vulnerability represents a critical elevation of privilege flaw within Microsoft Windows Hyper-V virtualization platform that allows attackers to escalate their privileges from guest operating system level to host system level. The technical root cause stems from improper validation of input parameters within Hyper-V's hypervisor components, specifically affecting the memory management and virtual machine communication mechanisms. Attackers can exploit this weakness by crafting malicious code within a compromised guest VM that manipulates hypercalls or memory access patterns to bypass security boundaries. The vulnerability affects multiple Windows versions including Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019, making it particularly dangerous in enterprise environments where virtualization is extensively deployed.
The flaw manifests through insufficient validation of virtual machine state transitions and memory mappings that occur during hypervisor operations. When a guest operating system attempts to perform certain privileged operations through hypercalls, the hypervisor fails to properly validate the parameters and access rights associated with these requests. This allows malicious code within the guest to manipulate memory addresses or execute unauthorized hypervisor functions that should only be accessible to the host system administrator. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-20 as "Improper Input Validation" and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1055 for Process Injection and T1497 for Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion, as attackers can leverage this to move laterally within virtualized environments.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation, as successful exploitation can lead to complete system compromise of the host environment. An attacker who gains elevated privileges through this vulnerability can access all data and resources available on the host system, potentially including other virtual machines running on the same physical hardware. This creates a cascading security risk where a single compromised guest VM could provide attackers with access to an entire virtualized infrastructure. Organizations using Hyper-V for cloud services or multi-tenant environments face particularly severe consequences as this vulnerability can enable attackers to access sensitive data from other customers' virtual machines.
Mitigation strategies should focus on immediate patch deployment through Microsoft's regular security updates, which address the underlying validation flaws in Hyper-V's hypervisor components. Organizations should implement network segmentation and isolation of critical virtual environments to limit the potential impact of exploitation. Additional protective measures include disabling unnecessary virtualization features, implementing strict access controls for virtual machine administrators, and monitoring for unusual hypervisor activity patterns. The vulnerability highlights the importance of maintaining up-to-date security patches in virtualized environments and demonstrates how flaws in hypervisor implementations can create fundamental security breaches that compromise entire infrastructure architectures. Security teams should conduct thorough assessments of their virtualization deployments to identify exposed systems and ensure proper isolation between different security domains within their virtualized environments.