CVE-2025-49746
Published: 18 July 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-49746 is a critical-severity Improper Authorization (CWE-285) vulnerability in Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. Its CVSS base score is 9.9 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 24.2% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as Other Platforms; in the Other ATLAS/OWASP Terms risk domain.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Enforces approved authorizations for logical access, directly preventing improper authorization that enables privilege escalation in Azure Machine Learning.
Employs the principle of least privilege to restrict low-privileged users from escalating to high privileges via this vulnerability.
Provides timely flaw remediation through vendor patches as specified in the MSRC update guide for this Azure Machine Learning authorization vulnerability.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The improper authorization vulnerability enables privilege escalation via exploitation of the Azure Machine Learning service, directly mapping to T1068: Exploitation for Privilege Escalation.
NVD Description
Improper authorization in Azure Machine Learning allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-49746 is an improper authorization vulnerability (CWE-285) affecting Azure Machine Learning. Published on 2025-07-18, it enables an authorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network, earning a critical CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.9 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H).
An attacker requires only low privileges (PR:L) to exploit this issue remotely across the network (AV:N), with low attack complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction needed (UI:N). Exploitation results in privilege escalation, yielding high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:I:A:H) due to a change in scope to high (S:C).
Microsoft's Security Response Center provides an update guide with mitigation details at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-49746.
Details
- CWE(s)
Affected Products
AI Security AnalysisAI
- AI Category
- Other Platforms
- Risk Domain
- Other ATLAS/OWASP Terms
- OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
- None mapped
- Classification Reason
- Azure Machine Learning is a cloud-based platform for machine learning workflows, fitting under 'Other Platforms' as it provides end-to-end ML services including training, deployment, and management.