Patched Flaw Let Copilot in Visual Studio and SSMS Run Commands on Developer Machines

Microsoft has released a patch for a remote code execution vulnerability in Copilot within Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The researcher who reported it in August says Microsoft rated it Important severity. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-103572.

According to the researcher, the root cause is a bypass of a path validation check. This let Copilot write to its own settings and configuration files, which allowed it to escape containment restrictions and run arbitrary commands. The researcher also says they showed in their report to Microsoft that a third party could exploit it through indirect prompt injection, achieving remote command execution. The core problem sits in a shared Copilot component, so both Visual Studio and SSMS are affected, including older versions such as Visual Studio 2022. The two tools share much of the same code and shell, which is why one flaw can reach both.

The researcher traced the weakness to how Windows handles filenames that end with a dot. Windows treats such names as the same file, and the check meant to protect Copilot's configuration files did not account for this. The source article is only partly reproduced here, so further technical detail is not covered. Visual Studio is widely used in enterprise development, so teams relying on these tools should take the update seriously.