CVE-2023-29338
Published: 09 May 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-29338 is a medium-severity Improper Authorization (CWE-285) vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Its CVSS base score is 6.6 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 12.8% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
CVE-2023-29338 is a spoofing vulnerability affecting Visual Studio Code, assigned a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.6 under vector AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N and linked to CWE-285. It was published on 9 May 2023.
An attacker with local access and low privileges can exploit the flaw when user interaction occurs, resulting in high impact to confidentiality and integrity on the affected system.
Advisory and patch details are published by Microsoft at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2023-29338.
The EPSS score rose from a low baseline to a peak of 0.0762 on 22 January 2025 before receding to the current value of 0.0314, indicating post-disclosure exploitation interest.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-32911
Vulnerability details
Visual Studio Code Spoofing Vulnerability
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Documented procedures facilitate correct implementation and ongoing management of authorization decisions.
Periodic reviews identify and correct flaws in authorization decisions or enforcement.
The control's documentation requirement reduces improper authorization by ensuring only mission-justified actions bypass authentication.
Establishing permitted attributes and values, plus auditing changes, ensures authorization decisions are based on correctly managed policy data.
Explicitly mandates authorizing remote access types before permitting connections, directly mitigating improper authorization.
The control explicitly requires authorization of each wireless access type prior to permitting connections.
Mandating explicit authorization of mobile device connections reduces the risk of improper authorization decisions for system access.
Specifying access authorizations for each account and requiring approvals for account requests enforces proper authorization decisions.