CVE-2025-47986
Published: 08 July 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-47986 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 35.0% 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-16 (Memory Protection) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly mandates timely flaw remediation, including patching the use-after-free vulnerability in Universal Print Management Service to prevent local privilege escalation.
Provides memory protection safeguards to prevent unauthorized code execution resulting from the use-after-free condition in the service.
Limits privilege escalation damage by enforcing least privilege for processes like the Universal Print Management Service.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Use-after-free in Windows service directly enables local privilege escalation with high impact.
NVD Description
Use after free in Universal Print Management Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-47986 is a use-after-free vulnerability (CWE-416) in the Universal Print Management Service, a component of Microsoft Windows operating systems. Published on 2025-07-08, it has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating high severity due to its potential for significant impact.
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N). Exploitation triggers a use-after-free condition, enabling privilege escalation in a changed scope (S:C) environment, which can result in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H).
Microsoft's advisory provides details on mitigations and patches in the update guide at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-47986.
Details
- CWE(s)