CVE-2025-21173
Published: 14 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-21173 is a high-severity Creation of Temporary File in Directory with Insecure Permissions (CWE-379) vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio 2022. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 16.2% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly remediates the .NET elevation of privilege flaw by requiring timely identification, reporting, and correction via patches as advised by Microsoft.
Enforces least privilege to restrict low-privileged local attackers from achieving high-impact escalation in .NET environments.
Mandates enforcement of access control policies to block unauthorized privilege escalation attempts exploiting the .NET vulnerability.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct EoP vulnerability enabling local privilege escalation via exploitation of insecure file permissions in .NET (CWE-379).
NVD Description
.NET Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-21173 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in .NET, published on 2025-01-14, with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.3 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). It is associated with CWE-379 and lacks additional NVD CWE details. The flaw allows unauthorized privilege escalation within .NET environments.
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity (AC:L), though it requires user interaction (UI:R). Successful exploitation enables high-impact consequences across confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H), typically resulting in privilege escalation on the affected system.
Microsoft's Security Response Center advisory at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21173 provides details on mitigation and patching. Additional vulnerability information is available at https://www.herodevs.com/vulnerability-directory/cve-2025-21173.
Details
- CWE(s)