Vulnerabilities > CVE-2025-21247
Attack vector
NETWORK Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
NONE Confidentiality impact
LOW Integrity impact
NONE Availability impact
NONE Summary
Improper resolution of path equivalence in Windows MapUrlToZone allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature over a network.
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Using Leading 'Ghost' Character Sequences to Bypass Input Filters An attacker intentionally introduces leading characters that enable getting the input past the filters. The API that is being targeted, ignores the leading "ghost" characters, and therefore processes the attackers' input. This occurs when the targeted API will accept input data in several syntactic forms and interpret it in the equivalent semantic way, while the filter does not take into account the full spectrum of the syntactic forms acceptable to the targeted API. Some APIs will strip certain leading characters from a string of parameters. Perhaps these characters are considered redundant, and for this reason they are removed. Another possibility is the parser logic at the beginning of analysis is specialized in some way that causes some characters to be removed. The attacker can specify multiple types of alternative encodings at the beginning of a string as a set of probes. One commonly used possibility involves adding ghost characters--extra characters that don't affect the validity of the request at the API layer. If the attacker has access to the API libraries being targeted, certain attack ideas can be tested directly in advance. Once alternative ghost encodings emerge through testing, the attacker can move from lab-based API testing to testing real-world service implementations.
- Using Alternative IP Address Encodings This attack relies on the attacker using unexpected formats for representing IP addresses. Networked applications may expect network location information in a specific format, such as fully qualified domains names, URL, IP address, or IP Address ranges. The issue that the attacker can exploit is that these design assumptions may not be validated against a variety of different possible encodings and network address location formats. Applications that use naming for creating policy namespaces for managing access control may be susceptible to being queried directly by IP addresses, which is ultimately a more generally authoritative way of communicating on a network. Alternative IP addresses can be used by the attacker to bypass application access control in order to gain access to data that is only protected by obscuring its location. In addition this type of attack can be used as a reconnaissance mechanism to provide entry point information that the attacker gathers to penetrate deeper into the system.