Microsoft kicked off its final Patch Tuesday of 2025 with fixes for 71 new vulnerabilities. Among these, one zero-day vulnerability, CVE-2024-49138, caught significant attention. This flaw, discovered by CrowdStrike’s Advanced Research Team, allows attackers to elevate privileges through a heap-based buffer overflow in the Windows Common Log File System Driver. The issue lets attackers overwrite memory, making it relatively easy for them to execute arbitrary code and gain system-level access. This kind of access can lead to severe threats, including ransomware attacks. Microsoft confirmed that CVE-2024-49138 is already being exploited in the wild.
Mike Walters from Action1 explained that the CLFS driver is crucial for applications that write transaction logs. This vulnerability allows unauthorized privilege escalation by manipulating the driver’s memory, potentially giving attackers the highest level of access on Windows systems. With a potential impact on any Windows machine since 2008 that uses this component, organizations face significant risks if they don’t act swiftly.
Chris Goettl from Ivanti pointed out that Microsoft rated this CVE as Important, giving it a 7.8 CVSSv3.1 score. However, given the risk it presents, it should be treated as Critical.
Reflecting on the year, Microsoft issued over 1,000 bug fixes, marking the second-highest total since 2020. Dustin Childs from the Zero Day Initiative highlighted that December 2024 is notable for 16 Critical vulnerabilities, all leading to remote code execution. Nine of these vulnerabilities target Windows Remote Desktop Services, while others affect LDAP, Message Queuing, LSASS, and Hyper-V.
CVE-2024-49112, affecting Windows LDAP, demands close attention with its extreme CVSS score of 9.8. This flaw impacts all Windows versions from Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 onward, allowing unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution if left unpatched. Because LDAP is essential for Domain Controllers, the risk escalates when this service is improperly exposed.
Rob Reeves from Immersive Labs explained that Microsoft indicated the attack complexity is low and requires no authentication. He stressed the urgency of limiting LDAP exposure, especially to untrusted networks. Attackers can exploit the LDAP service by executing crafted commands, gaining system-level access. This access can give them control over credential hashes in the domain, which is a critical breach.
Reeves warned that ransomware groups would likely race to exploit this vulnerability since control over a Domain Controller means access to all machines in that domain. Organizations using Windows networks and Domain Controllers must patch this vulnerability immediately and monitor their environments for possible exploitation.
Lastly, a lesser-known bug in Microsoft Muzic, tracked as CVE-2024-49063, also deserves attention. This remote code execution vulnerability in the AI-driven music research project could be resolved by using the latest GitHub build. It highlights that untrusted data deserialization can lead to serious security issues, especially if attackers can craft a malicious payload. For context, Microsoft Muzic explores various AI applications in music, such as lyric generation and singing voice synthesis.