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 34.1% 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).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-21178 is a remote code execution vulnerability affecting Visual Studio. It carries a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8 and is associated with CWE-122 and CWE-125. The flaw permits an attacker to achieve full confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact on affected systems.
An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit the issue over a network with low attack complexity, provided the victim performs a required user interaction. Successful exploitation grants the attacker the ability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the targeted Visual Studio process.
Microsoft's security advisory at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21178 addresses mitigation steps and patch availability for the vulnerability.
The associated EPSS score rose from a low baseline to a peak of 0.0138, indicating emerging exploitation interest after public disclosure.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-2258
Vulnerability details
Visual Studio Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
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.
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Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
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.