CVE-2025-33073: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-33073 is a Windows SMB Client Elevation of Privilege vulnerability that was publicly disclosed prior to patching. The vulnerability was assigned a CVSSv3 score of 8.8 and affects Windows Server Message Block (SMB) client functionality. It was discovered by multiple researchers including Keisuke Hirata (CrowdStrike), Synacktiv, Stefan Walter (SySS GmbH), RedTeam Pentesting GmbH, and James Forshaw of Google Project Zero (Tenable Blog, Bleeping Computer).

The vulnerability stems from improper access control in Windows SMB that allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker needs to execute a specially crafted malicious script to coerce the victim machine to connect back to the attack system using SMB and authenticate. This could result in elevation of privilege to SYSTEM level access on the affected system (Bleeping Computer, ZDI).

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to gain SYSTEM-level privileges on vulnerable devices. This means an attacker could potentially take complete control of the affected system, leading to unauthorized access to sensitive data and system resources (Tenable Blog, Cybersecurity News).

Microsoft has released patches to address this vulnerability as part of the June 2025 Patch Tuesday updates. As a workaround before applying the patch, organizations can mitigate the risk by enforcing server-side SMB signing via Group Policy (Bleeping Computer).