CVE-2026-106030

MediumCVSS 6.8

Published: 16/10/2026(UTC)Updated: 16/10/2026(UTC)Translated: 16/10/2026(UTC)NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk

0.14%

3th percentile - higher than 3% of all known CVEs

Summary

NordVPN for Windows allows local attackers to stop unprotected Windows system services and change their startup type to Manual via named pipes. The NordVPN user-mode application allows a low-privileged attacker to act as a trusted process and connect to the named pipe "\\.\pipe\nord-security\v1\NordVpnService\Server". The attacker can then invoke the "ISettingsGrpc.StopService" and "ISettingsGrpc.ChangeServiceStartType" methods with an arbitrary service name, leading to denial of service of critical system services. Services protected by Windows (PPL processes, Windows Tamper Protection), such as Windows Defender, cannot be stopped or reconfigured. This issue was fixed in version 8.12.

Risk Assessment

A low-privileged attacker can stop critical system services, causing denial of service and potentially destabilizing the system. Services protected by Windows are immune to this attack.

Recommendation

Update NordVPN for Windows to version 8.12 or later. Until then, consider restricting local access to the machine.

Other vulnerabilities in NordVPN

CVE-2019-25572Medium
NordVPN 6.19.6 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows local attackers to crash the application by submitting an excessively long string in the email input field. Attackers can paste a buffer of 100,000 characters into the email field during login to trigger an application crash.

Original NVD description (English source)

NordVPN for Windows allows local attackers to stop unprotected Windows system services and change their startup type to Manual via named pipes. The NordVPN user-mode application allows a low-privileged attacker to act as a trusted process and connect to the named pipe "\\.\pipe\nord-security\v1\NordVpnService\Server". The attacker can then invoke the "ISettingsGrpc.StopService" and "ISettingsGrpc.ChangeServiceStartType" methods with an arbitrary service name, allowing them to stop any unprotected Windows service and change its startup type. This leads to denial of service of critical system services. Services protected by Windows (PPL processes, Windows Tamper Protection), such as Windows Defender, cannot be stopped or reconfigured. This issue was fixed in version 8.12

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS