Incorrect Privilege AssignmentWeakness · CWE-266

CVE-2025-41255

HIGH · 8.0 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-06-25
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
87/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges

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
Cyberduck and Mountain Duck improperly handle TLS certificate pinning for untrusted certificates (e.g., self-signed), unnecessarily installing it to the Windows Certificate Store of the current user without any restrictions. This issue affects Cyberduck through 9.1.6 and Mountain Duck through 4.17.5.

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 · moderate confidence

Cyberduck and Mountain Duck improperly handle TLS certificate pinning by accepting untrusted (self-signed) certificates and installing them to the Windows Certificate Store of the current user without any restrictions. This allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to inject malicious certificates into the user's certificate store, which then become trusted by other applications on the system.

MitigationUpgrade to the latest versions of Cyberduck and Mountain Duck when patches become available. Avoid connecting to untrusted servers with self-signed certificates until the fix is applied.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

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
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

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

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Verify Cyberduck or Mountain Duck is installed
    Check for the presence of Cyberduck or Mountain Duck installation directories, typically under C:\Program Files\Cyberduck or C:\Program Files\Mountain Duck. Also check the Windows registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall for display names containing 'Cyberduck' or 'Mountain Duck'.
    Affected if Either Cyberduck or Mountain Duck is installed on the system.
  2. Identify installed version of Cyberduck
    Open the Cyberduck application and navigate to Help > About, or right-click the Cyberduck.exe file in the installation directory, select Properties, and check the Details tab for the Version number.
    Affected if The installed version has not been patched and falls within the vulnerable version range.
  3. Identify installed version of Mountain Duck
    Open the Mountain Duck application and navigate to Help > About, or right-click the MountainDuck.exe file in the installation directory, select Properties, and check the Details tab for the Version number.
    Affected if The installed version has not been patched and falls within the vulnerable version range.
  4. Inspect Windows Certificate Store for suspicious certificates
    Open certmgr.msc (Current User certificates) and review certificates in Personal, Trusted Root Certification Authorities, and Other People stores. Look for certificates recently added (check Issued On date) that correspond to servers the user connected to using Cyberduck or Mountain Duck, especially if those servers used self-signed certificates.
    Affected if New or unexpected certificates exist in the certificate store that were added during or after Cyberduck/Mountain Duck usage, particularly certificates from untrusted or unknown sources.
  5. Review application logs for untrusted connection handling
    Locate Cyberduck or Mountain Duck log files, typically found in %APPDATA%\Cyberduck\logs or %APPDATA%\Mountain Duck\logs. Search for entries indicating certificate acceptance or trust decisions.
    Affected if Logs show acceptance of self-signed or untrusted certificates during connections.

A user is affected if Cyberduck or Mountain Duck is installed with an unpatched version AND the user has connected to servers with untrusted certificates, resulting in certificates being added to the Windows Certificate Store.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

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
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Upgrade to the latest versions of Cyberduck and Mountain Duck when patches become available. Avoid connecting to untrusted servers with self-signed certificates until the fix is applied.

Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Cyberduck: version 9.1.7 or later; Mountain Duck: version 4.17.6 or later

  1. 1. Identify the installed version of Cyberduck or Mountain Duck on the system
  2. 2. For Cyberduck: Navigate to the application and check Help > About to confirm the version
  3. 3. For Mountain Duck: Navigate to the application and check Help > About to confirm the version
  4. 4. If running Cyberduck version 9.1.6 or earlier, download and install the latest version from the official Cyberduck website
  5. 5. If running Mountain Duck version 4.17.5 or earlier, download and install the latest version from the official Mountain Duck website
  6. 6. Restart the application after upgrading
  7. 7. Verify the certificate pinning behavior no longer installs untrusted certificates to the Windows Certificate Store

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

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation12.0 h
  • Testing6.0 h
  • Review / QA4.0 h
26.0 hours of engineering $4,580
Get help mitigating

An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $7,328.

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-41255 — 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-2025-41255 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

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