The flaw, tracked as CVE-2021-24093, was patched by Microsoft on February 9 with its Patch Tuesday updates. Dominik Röttsches of Google and Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Project Zero have been credited for reporting the issue to Microsoft.

A CVSS score of 8.8 has been assigned to the vulnerability, but Microsoft has rated it critical for all affected operating systems. The list includes Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 and 2019, and Windows Server.