# CVE-2019-16098 — Msi Afterburner

> As of 2024-08-05, CVE-2019-16098 is a HIGH-severity vulnerability in Msi Afterburner, CVSS v3.1 7.8, EPSS 19.8% (97.3th percentile). Threadlinqs Intelligence links 1 tracked threat campaign to CVE-2019-16098, most recently “Chinese-speaking threat group UAT-10147 uses agentic AI to automate exploitation of internet-facing web servers”.

**Last updated:** 2024-08-05

## What is CVE-2019-16098?

The driver in Micro-Star MSI Afterburner 4.6.2.15658 (aka RTCore64.sys and RTCore32.sys) allows any authenticated user to read and write to arbitrary memory, I/O ports, and MSRs. This can be exploited for privilege escalation, code execution under high privileges, and information disclosure. These signed drivers can also be used to bypass the Microsoft driver-signing policy to deploy malicious code.

The record classifies CVE-2019-16098 under weakness classes [CWE-125](https://intel.threadlinqs.com/cwe/CWE-125), [CWE-787](https://intel.threadlinqs.com/cwe/CWE-787). Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw requires local access to the host, needs low-privilege credentials, needs no user interaction, and has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability. 1 affected-product entry is recorded, across 1 vendor, listed below. The identifier was first published 2581 days ago.

## Severity and exploitation probability

- **CVSS v3.1 base score:** 7.8 — HIGH (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **EPSS (FIRST):** 19.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97.3% of all scored CVEs
- **CISA KEV:** Not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- **Threadlinqs priority:** 9.8/10 — a Threadlinqs composite of the CVSS base score, the EPSS percentile and public exploit availability
- **Published:** 2019-09-11, last modified 2024-08-05

## Is CVE-2019-16098 being exploited?

Weaponised exploit code for CVE-2019-16098 is publicly available. 6 public proof-of-concept repositories are tracked for this identifier.

- [Barakat/CVE-2019-16098](https://github.com/Barakat/CVE-2019-16098) (github)
- [Offensive-Panda/NT-AUTHORITY-SYSTEM-CONTEXT-RTCORE](https://github.com/Offensive-Panda/NT-AUTHORITY-SYSTEM-CONTEXT-RTCORE) (github)
- [0xDivyanshu-new/CVE-2019-16098](https://github.com/0xDivyanshu-new/CVE-2019-16098) (github)
- [VortexCry-Organization/VortexCry-Ransomware-Release](https://github.com/VortexCry-Organization/VortexCry-Ransomware-Release) (github)
- [CrowTheArchfiend/RTCore64-probe](https://github.com/CrowTheArchfiend/RTCore64-probe) (github)
- [trickest/cve](https://github.com/trickest/cve/blob/main/2019/CVE-2019-16098.md) (trickest)

## Affected products and versions

- **Msi**: Afterburner 4.6.2.15658

## How to fix CVE-2019-16098

No vendor patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2019-16098 in the tracked sources. Follow the references below for a fix, and treat the products listed above as exposed until the vendor states otherwise.

## Threat activity tracking CVE-2019-16098

1 tracked threat in the Threadlinqs corpus references CVE-2019-16098, either in the campaign’s CVE list or as an indicator on the campaign record.

- [Chinese-speaking threat group UAT-10147 uses agentic AI to automate exploitation of internet-facing web servers](https://intel.threadlinqs.com/threat/TL-2026-2096) — HIGH · 2026-08-21

## Sources

Enriched from CVE.org, NVD, FIRST EPSS, GitHub Security Advisories, public proof-of-concept repositories. Last verified by Threadlinqs on 2026-10-05. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

**Other references**

- [github.com](https://github.com/Barakat/CVE-2019-16098)

Canonical: https://intel.threadlinqs.com/cve/CVE-2019-16098
Full detection coverage and IOCs for threats exploiting CVE-2019-16098 via the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier): https://intel.threadlinqs.com/mcp