Patch Tuesday November 2025 - Critical Microsoft Security Patches Released For Privilege Escalation and Remote Code Vulnerabilities

Microsoft releases security patches for vulnerabilities in its products on the second Tuesday of each month. Immersive’s Container 7 Research Team reviews these patch notes for the standout vulnerabilities you need to know about.

CVE-2025-62215 - 7.0 - Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

Active exploitation has been detected for CVE-2025-62215, an 'Important' rated vulnerability in the Windows Kernel. The flaw is a vulnerability that has been identified to be used as a post-exploitation tool, allowing an attacker who has already gained a foothold on a system to escalate their privileges to the highest possible level.

The root cause is a complex memory corruption issue stemming from two combined weaknesses: CWE-362 (Race Condition) and CWE-415 (Double Free). An attacker with low-privilege local access can run a specially crafted application that repeatedly attempts to trigger this race condition. The goal is to get multiple threads to interact with a shared kernel resource in an unsynchronized way, confusing the kernel's memory management and causing it to free the same memory block twice. This successful "double free" corrupts the kernel heap, allowing the attacker to overwrite memory and hijack the system's execution flow.

Organizations must prioritize applying the patch for this vulnerability. While a 7.0 CVSS score might not always top a patch list, the active exploitation status makes it a critical priority. A successful exploit grants the attacker SYSTEM privileges, allowing them to completely bypass endpoint security, steal credentials, install rootkits, and perform other malicious actions. This is a critical link in an attacker's post-exploitation playbook.

CVE-2025-59512 - 7.8 - Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

An 'Important' rated, 7.8 CVSS vulnerability has been identified and patched in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). Before analyzing the flaw, it's important to understand what CEIP is. The "Customer Experience Improvement Program" is a built-in Windows telemetry service, often running as a scheduled task (like wsqmcons.exe), that collects anonymous data about system usage, hardware configurations, and application performance. This data is sent to Microsoft to identify trends and improve future products. Because this service is designed to operate in the background, often with high privileges, it presents an attractive target for privilege escalation.

The vulnerability itself, CWE-284 (Improper Access Control), is a common flaw that allows for privilege escalation. This is ideal for an attacker's toolkit for the second stage. After gaining an initial foothold on a machine (e.g., as a standard user from a phishing attack), they can run a local exploit. Due to the "Improper Access Control," the CEIP service fails to properly validate the attacker's permissions, allowing them to send a malicious command or request. This allows the attacker to break out of their low-privilege sandbox and execute code with the full permissions of the CEIP service, ultimately gaining SYSTEM privileges.

This vulnerability should be a high priority for patching, given that it is more likely to be exploited and is present on all Windows machines. It represents a simple, reliable, and universally available method to go from user to system-level privileges on any unpatched Windows machine. 

CVE-2025-60705 - 7.8 - Windows Client-Side Caching Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

The Windows Client-Side Caching (CSC) Service is the engine behind the "Offline Files" feature in Windows, which allows users to cache copies of network files on their local machine for offline access. To manage file synchronization and access rights, this service must operate at a high privilege level, making it a valuable target for attackers.

This vulnerability creates an opportunity for privilege escalation. An attacker who has already compromised a machine with a standard user account can run a local exploit. This exploit sends a specially crafted request to the CSC service. Due to the "Improper Access Control" flaw, the service improperly validates this request, allowing the attacker to execute code or perform actions with the service's high-level permissions. This ultimately grants the attacker Administrator privileges on the machine.

Organizations must prioritize patching this. It represents a straightforward escalation path for any attacker who has gained an initial foothold in the network. 

CVE-2025-60719, CVE-2025-62213, CVE-2025-62217 - 7.0 - Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

An 'Important' rated, 7.0 CVSS vulnerability has been patched in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver (AFD) for WinSock. This is a critical kernel-mode driver (afd.sys) that is fundamental to the Windows operating system; it manages network operations and is the core of the Windows Sockets (Winsock) interface that almost all network-related applications use. A flaw in this component is inherently high-risk.

Traditionally, WinSock’s afd.sys driver is an attractive part of the operating system for attackers to look for vulnerabilities. Due to it being so intertwined with network-related functionality of Windows, it has the potential to be a way in for many applications in the Windows ecosystem. There have been many vulnerabilities in the past that have been weaponized in this kernel-mode driver; notable examples include CVE-2023-21768 and CVE-2024-38193, which became very popular in various post-exploitation tools. Any vulnerabilities in WinSock are worth patching as soon as you can. 

CVE-2025-60724 - 9.8 - GDI+ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

A Critical, 9.8 CVSS vulnerability has been identified and patched in the Microsoft Graphics Component, specifically the GDI+ library. GDI+ (Graphics Device Interface) is a core, low-level Windows component responsible for rendering 2D graphics, images, and text. It is used by a massive number of applications, including Microsoft Office, web servers processing images, and countless third-party applications. With this vulnerability, when the server-side application automatically parses a specially crafted metafile, the vulnerable GDI+ library is called. This triggers the heap overflow, allowing the attacker to corrupt memory and gain Remote Code Execution on the server.

The patch for this should be an organization's highest priority. While Microsoft assesses this as "Exploitation Less Likely," a 9.8-rated flaw in a ubiquitous library like GDI+ is a critical risk. The "Less Likely" assessment often implies that modern exploit mitigations (like ASLR) make it difficult to achieve reliable code execution, but it does not mean it's impossible. Given that this vulnerability can be triggered by simply uploading a file to a public-facing web application, any system that processes user-supplied documents is at risk. 

CVE-2025-62222 - 8.8 - Visual Studio Code CoPilot Chat Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Ben McCarthy, Lead Cyber Security Engineer, Immersive

An 'Important' rated, 8.8 CVSS vulnerability has been identified and patched in the Visual Studio Code CoPilot Chat Extension. This component is a core part of Microsoft's "Agentic AI" initiative, integrating generative AI directly into developers' workflows. The vulnerability's root cause is Improper Input Validation, which leads to command injection. The extension fails to properly sanitize or neutralize special characters in data received from an external source before passing it to a command.

The attack chain here is a novel and concerning one that targets the developer's trusted environment. An attacker crafts a malicious GitHub issue within a repository. The description of this issue contains the hidden, unsanitized command. The attacker must then convince the developer to interact with this specific issue in a non-standard way: by "enabling a particular mode on the attacker’s crafted issue."

This user action causes the extension to read and execute the malicious issue description. This triggers the command injection flaw, leading to full Remote Code Execution in the context of the user.

Organizations must prioritize this patch for all developer workstations. A compromised developer machine is a critical entry point for a wider supply chain attack. While Microsoft assesses this as "Exploitation Less Likely", the high CVSS score reflects the severe impact.