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CVE-2023-31096 · MITRE: CVE-2023-31096 Windows Agere Soft Modem Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Microsoft is aware of vulnerabilities in the third party Agere Soft Modem drivers that ship natively with supported Windows operating systems. This is an announcement of the removal of agrsm64.sys and agrsm.sys drivers. The drivers have been removed in the January 2026 cumulative update. Soft modem hardware dependent on these specific drivers will no longer work on Windows. Microsoft recommends removing any existing dependencies on this hardware. This vulnerability was documented in 2023 via a CVE-2023-31096 issued by MITRE.

Severity
Important
Impact
Elevation of Privilege
CVSS
7.8 base · 7.2 temporal
Release
2026-01-13
Signals
Agere Windows Modem Driver Elevation of Privilege Exploited: No Publicly disclosed: Yes Exploitability: Exploitation More Likely
CWE
CWE-121: Stack-based Buffer Overflow
Patch Diff
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Description
Microsoft is aware of vulnerabilities in the third party Agere Soft Modem drivers that ship natively with supported Windows operating systems. This is an announcement of the removal of agrsm64.sys and agrsm.sys drivers. The drivers have been removed in the January 2026 cumulative update. Soft modem hardware dependent on these specific drivers will no longer work on Windows. Microsoft recommends removing any existing dependencies on this hardware. This vulnerability was documented in 2023 via a CVE-2023-31096 issued by MITRE.
FAQ / Articles
FAQ
What privileges could be gained by an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability? An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.
Agere Windows Modem Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Stack-based buffer overflow in Agere Windows Modem Driver allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
FAQ
Is the vulnerability only exploitable if the Agere Soft Modem is actively being used? No. All supported versions of Windows can be affected by a successful exploitation of this vulnerability, even if the modem is not actively being used.