CVE-2025-21178
Published: 14 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-21178 is a high-severity Heap-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-122) vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio 2022. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203); ranked in the top 42.1% 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 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly mandates timely patching of known flaws like this Visual Studio RCE vulnerability to eliminate the exploitable condition.
Implements memory protections such as ASLR and DEP to mitigate remote code execution from heap overflows (CWE-122) and out-of-bounds reads (CWE-125) in Visual Studio.
Requires vulnerability scanning to identify unpatched instances of vulnerable Visual Studio versions across the system.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
RCE vuln in client app (Visual Studio) with AV:N/PR:N/UI:R directly maps to client-side exploitation and malicious file execution.
NVD Description
Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-21178 is a Remote Code Execution vulnerability affecting Visual Studio. Published on 2025-01-14T18:15:30.847, it carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and is associated with CWEs-122, CWE-125, and NVD-CWE-noinfo.
The vulnerability enables remote code execution over a network connection with low attack complexity and no required privileges on the target system, though it requires user interaction to trigger. Successful exploitation grants an attacker high-impact access to confidentiality, integrity, and availability, potentially allowing arbitrary code execution in the context of the affected Visual Studio process.
Microsoft's update guide provides details on mitigation and patching for this vulnerability, available at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21178.
Details
- CWE(s)