Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-72978 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-72978 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-72978?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.9, published 8 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-72978?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-72978 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a hosted service.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-72978?
- Check whether you run Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
This vulnerability is a resource exhaustion / denial-of-service flaw in AD FS caused by insufficient rate limiting or resource allocation controls. An unauthenticated attacker can send malicious requests over the network to trigger excessive resource consumption (memory, CPU, or connections), exhausting server capacity and rendering the service unavailable. The vulnerability requires network access to the AD FS service but does not require prior authentication. No patch information is specified in the advisory details provided.
Affected products
- Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services
Timeline
- 2026-09-08: disclosed