CVE-2025-47161
Published: 15 May 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-47161 is a high-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Microsoft Defender For Endpoint. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 10.8% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
The vulnerability CVE-2025-47161 stems from improper access control in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. It is tracked under CWE-284 and carries a CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.8 reflecting local attack vector, low complexity, and low privileges required.
An authorized local attacker can exploit the flaw to elevate privileges on the affected system, resulting in high impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability without any user interaction required.
The Microsoft Security Response Center advisory at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-47161 supplies mitigation guidance. The EPSS score rose from a low starting point to a peak of 0.0581 on 2026-04-16 before receding to the current value of 0.0436, indicating that exploitation interest emerged after disclosure.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-15199
Vulnerability details
Improper access control in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 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.
The access control policy and procedures directly mandate and enforce proper access control mechanisms across the organization.
Device lock enforces restricted access until re-authentication, directly reducing unauthorized use of active sessions.
Supervision and review of access control activities directly detects and remediates improper access configurations or usages.
Explicitly identifying and documenting actions permitted without identification or authentication enforces proper access control boundaries by defining justified exceptions.
By automatically labeling outputs with security attributes, the control supports attribute-based enforcement and reduces exploitability of improper access control weaknesses.
Associating and retaining security attributes with data directly supports enforcement of access control decisions across storage, processing, and transmission.
Requiring prior authorization for each remote access type prevents improper access control over remote connections.
Requiring authorization of wireless access before allowing connections enforces proper access control for this access method.