CVE-2025-25003
Published: 11 March 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-25003 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Search Path Element (CWE-427) vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio 2022. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique DLL (T1574.001); ranked in the top 44.6% 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 AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly remediates the uncontrolled search path element vulnerability in Visual Studio by identifying, prioritizing, and applying vendor-provided patches.
Enforces least privilege to restrict low-privileged local attackers from placing malicious files in directories included in Visual Studio's search path.
Deploys anti-malware scanning and blocking to identify and prevent execution of malicious code loaded via Visual Studio's uncontrolled search path vulnerability.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Uncontrolled search path element (CWE-427) directly enables DLL side-loading and path interception by search order hijacking to load attacker-controlled code, facilitating local privilege escalation.
NVD Description
Uncontrolled search path element in Visual Studio allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-25003 is an uncontrolled search path element vulnerability (CWE-427) in Visual Studio. Published on 2025-03-11T17:16:38.043, it carries 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), indicating high potential impact from local exploitation.
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity (AC:L), provided they induce user interaction (UI:R). Successful exploitation enables privilege escalation, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H) within the local scope (S:U).
The Microsoft Security Response Center advisory at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-25003 details mitigation strategies and available patches for addressing this issue.
Details
- CWE(s)