CVE Alert: CVE-2025-50175 – Microsoft – Windows 10 Version 1809

Risk verdict

High risk of local privilege escalation on affected Windows platforms; patch promptly for systems that permit local access.

Why this matters

An authenticated user could elevate to SYSTEM, enabling persistence, broad data access, and potential compromise of domain trust relationships. In practice, this raises the threat to endpoints and servers across enterprise networks, particularly where patch cadence is slow or heterogeneous.

Most likely attack path

• Preconditions: local access (AV:L, AC:L, PR:L, UI:N) with Scope Unchanged.
• attacker could trigger a use-after-free in Windows Digital Media to gain full control on the host, then reuse compromised tokens or credentials to move laterally within the host and, if privileges allow, impact adjacent systems.

Who is most exposed

Commonly exposed in organisations with mixed Windows 10/11/Server deployments and devices where digital media components are enabled or not tightly controlled; environments lacking uniform patch management are most at risk.

Detection ideas

• Monitor for media-related process crashes and heap/memory corruption dumps.
• Watch for sudden priviledge-escalation activity: unexpected SYSTEM-level process creation, token impersonation, or new services/tasks.
• Inspect Windows Event Logs and crash dumps for use-after-free patterns in the digital media subsystem.
• Sudden changes to security tokens or unusual lateral movement activity following media processing events.

Mitigation and prioritisation

• Apply the vendor’s latest Windows updates addressing this vulnerability; test in a controlled pilot before broader rollout.
• Enforce least-privilege, reduce local accounts, and tighten access to Windows Digital Media components.
• Enable robust EDR/EDR-like monitoring to detect privilege-escalation indicators and media-subsystem anomalies.
• Change-management: schedule a targeted patch window; ensure rollback paths and backups.
• If KEV is true or EPSS ≥ 0.5, treat as priority 1; otherwise, maintain high-priority remediation across affected estates.