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 29.8% 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).
Deeper analysis
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.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-20651
Vulnerability details
Use after free in Universal Print Management Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Use-after-free in Windows service directly enables local privilege escalation with high impact.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
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.