According to Infosecurity Magazine, Microsoft’s final Patch Tuesday of 2025, released on December 10, patched a total of 66 vulnerabilities. The update included fixes for three zero-day flaws, one of which, tracked as CVE-2025-62221, is already being actively exploited in the wild. This critical bug is an elevation of privilege flaw in the Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver that lets attackers gain full system control. The other two zero-days, CVE-2025-54100 in PowerShell and CVE-2025-64671 in GitHub Copilot for Jetbrains, were publicly disclosed but not yet exploited. Among all patches, 19 were for remote code execution flaws and 28 for elevation of privilege issues. The update lands as sysadmins are already dealing with widespread attacks exploiting the separate React2Shell vulnerability.
Kernel Flaw: The Big One
So, CVE-2025-62221 is the headline grabber, and for good reason. It’s a classic, scary escalation chain. Basically, an attacker starts with a low-privilege foothold—maybe from a phishing email or a compromised app. Then, they hit this kernel driver bug, a use-after-free flaw, and boom: they’re running code at the SYSTEM level. That’s total control of the machine. Mike Walters from Action1 nailed the real danger: this isn’t just about one compromised PC. It’s a sandbox escape hatch and a persistence engine. With system privileges, you can plant stuff that survives reboots, disable security tools, and steal credentials to jump to other machines on the network. The fact there’s no public proof-of-concept yet is almost more worrying. It means the groups who *are* exploiting it have a private advantage, and the clock is ticking before that knowledge leaks out to every script kiddie.
The Other Zero-Days And Critical Patches
The PowerShell RCE bug, CVE-2025-54100, is a sneaky one. Think about it: PowerShell is everywhere in admin workflows and, let’s be honest, attacker toolkits. The flaw is in how it processes web content. So if you trick a user (or a script) into running something like `Invoke-WebRequest` on a malicious site, you can run code as that user. It’s the kind of bug that will be a favorite for spear-phishing campaigns. The GitHub Copilot flaw is more niche but shows how AI coding assistants are becoming new attack surfaces. The three critical RCEs in Office and Outlook? They’re your standard “open a bad document” or “preview a malicious email” nightmares. They get patched every month, but they’re always a major infection vector because they target user behavior directly.
Broader Patching Panic
Here’s the thing: this Patch Tuesday isn’t happening in a vacuum. Sysadmins are already in fire-drill mode over React2Shell, which is being hammered in real-world attacks. Now they have to prioritize this kernel zero-day and test patches for core services like PowerShell. And they can’t ignore the other vendors either. Look at that Ivanti EPM flaw with a CVSS score of 9.6—an unauthenticated attacker can poison an admin dashboard and hijack a session just by an admin looking at it. That’s brutal. It’s a perfect storm for IT teams trying to wrap up projects before the holiday freeze. The end-of-year rush to patch is becoming a brutal tradition.
What It All Means
This batch really underscores two modern truths. First, attacks are all about chaining. A single flaw might get a foot in the door, but it’s the combination of, say, a phishing RCE with a kernel EoP flaw that leads to a total breach. Defense has to be layered because any single layer can fail. Second, the attack surface keeps expanding. We’ve gone from worrying about OS and Office, to browsers and cloud drivers, to now AI coding assistants and enterprise management consoles like Ivanti’s. For operations relying on stable, hardened computing platforms in critical environments—think manufacturing floors or control rooms—this constant churn is a major challenge. It’s why many turn to specialized providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs, for hardware built with security and long-term stability in mind from the ground up. The takeaway? Patching is more critical and more exhausting than ever. December is for holidays, but first, it’s for rebooting servers.
