Windows 10 1507Operating system · Microsoft

CVE-2025-21285

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-01-14
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 10.0.10240.20890 / 10.0.14393.7699 or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
High EPSS Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) Denial of Service Vulnerability

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-476

The code follows a pointer that is null, crashing the process. An attacker who can reliably trigger it turns the crash into a denial of service. The fix is checking for null before use and handling the failure path gracefully.

General guidance for the null pointer dereference class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Windows 10 1507Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.10240.20890
Windows 10 1607Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.14393.7699
Windows 10 1809Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.17763.6775
Windows 10 21h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.19044.5371
Windows 10 22h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.19045.5371
Windows 11 22h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.22621.4751
Windows 11 23h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.22631.4751
Windows 11 24h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.26100.2894

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 10.0.10240.20890 / 10.0.14393.7699 / 10.0.17763.6775 or later
Fixed in 10.0.10240.2089010.0.14393.769910.0.17763.6775
Vendor patch msrc.microsoft.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Apply the February 2025 Windows Security Update for your specific Windows version (e.g., Windows 10 22h2: 10.0.19045.5371 or later, Windows 11 23h2: 10.0.22631.4751 or later)

  1. Check the current Windows version by running 'winver' or 'systeminfo' in Command Prompt
  2. Navigate to the Microsoft Update Catalog or use Windows Update to check for the security update for CVE-2025-21285
  3. Apply the February 2025 Windows Security Update (or subsequent relevant update) that addresses this vulnerability
  4. Restart the system after applying the update to ensure the MSMQ component is fully patched
  5. Verify the patch was applied successfully by checking the installed updates or using 'systeminfo' to confirm the OS version matches or exceeds the fixed release version
Caveat Standard Windows security update - minimal risk; may require system restart

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $3,200. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-21285 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-21285 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data