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Windows 10 1507Operating system · Microsoft

CVE-2025-21373

HIGH · 7.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-02-11
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 10.0.10240.20915 / 10.0.14393.7785 or later.
See remediation →
80/100
Remediation priority · High
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
Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege 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-59

A file operation follows a symbolic link without checking where it actually points, so an attacker who can plant or swap a link redirects the operation to a file they should not be able to touch. It is a common local privilege-escalation primitive. Remediation is resolving and validating the real target path, and avoiding operations on attacker-controllable links.

General guidance for the link following (symlink) 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:< 10.0.10240.20915
Windows 10 1607Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.14393.7785
Windows 10 1809Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.17763.6893
Windows 10 21h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.19044.5487
Windows 10 22h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.19045.5487
Windows 11 22h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.22621.4890
Windows 11 23h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.22631.4890
Windows 11 24h2Operating system
Affected:< 10.0.26100.3194

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
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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 10.0.10240.20915 / 10.0.14393.7785 / 10.0.17763.6893 or later
Fixed in 10.0.10240.2091510.0.14393.778510.0.17763.6893
Vendor patch msrc.microsoft.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Upgrade to the respective Windows build number: 10.0.10240.20915 (Win10 1507), 10.0.14393.7785 (Win10 1607), 10.0.17763.6893 (Win10 1809), 10.0.19044.5487 (Win10 21h2), 10.0.19045.5487 (Win10 22h2), 10.0.22621.4890 (Win11 22h2), 10.0.22631.4890 (Win11 23h2), or 10.0.26100.3194 (Win11 24h2)

  1. Identify the current Windows version and build number by running 'winver' or 'systeminfo'
  2. Determine which Windows 10 or 11 version and build you are running from the affected list
  3. Apply the appropriate Windows security update for CVE-2025-21373 via Windows Update, or download and install the update manually from the Microsoft Update Catalog
  4. Verify the installation succeeded by checking that the build number matches or exceeds: Windows 10 1507: 10.0.10240.20915, Windows 10 1607: 10.0.14393.7785, Windows 10 1809: 10.0.17763.6893, Windows 10 21h2: 10.0.19044.5487, Windows 10 22h2: 10.0.19045.5487, Windows 11 22h2: 10.0.22621.4890, Windows 11 23h2: 10.0.22631.4890, Windows 11 24h2: 10.0.26100.3194
  5. Restart the system as prompted to complete the update
Caveat Standard Windows update risks apply (potential for update-related issues; back up data before applying)

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 $1,950. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-21373 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

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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-2025-21373 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