CVE-2026-18485

high

Published 2026-08-05 · Modified 2026-08-05

CVSS v3

7.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

8.5

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

VIR risk

7.8

Description

There is a local privilege escalation vulnerability recently discovered in the NI-PAL kernel driver. This may allow a local, authenticated user to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability affects NI-PAL 26.3.1 and prior versions running on Microsoft Windows.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

75%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

https://www.ni.com/en/support/security/available-critical-and-security-updates-for-ni-software/2026/local-privilege-escalation-in-ni-pal.html

CWEs

CWE-1285

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.