CVE-2025-29803: Visual Studio Tools for Applications and SQL Server Management Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Overview

Severity
High (CVSS 7.3)
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Category
Elevation of Privilege
Exploit Status
Not Exploited
Exploitation Likelihood
Less Likely
Patch Tuesday
2025-Apr
Released
2025-04-08
EPSS Score
0.46% (percentile: 64.1%)

Description

Uncontrolled search path element in Visual Studio Tools for Applications and SQL Server Management Studio allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.

FAQ

What privileges could be gained by an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability? An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the privileges of the authenticated user. According to the CVSS metric, the attack vector is local (AV:L), privileges are low (PR:L), and user interaction is required (UI:R). What is the target context of the remote code execution? This attack requires an authenticated attacker to place a specially crafted .dll file in a local network location. When a victim runs this file, it loads the malicious DLL.

Affected Products (5)

Developer Tools

  • Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) 2019
  • Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) 2022
  • VSTA 2022 SDK
  • VSTA 2019 SDK

SQL Server

  • SQL Server Management Studio 20.2

Security Updates (4)

Acknowledgments

<a href="https://medium.com/@spoppi">Sandro Poppi</a>

Revision History

  • 2025-04-08: Information published.