Windows BitLocker Flaw Allows Privilege Escalation by Attackers

Microsoft has released a warning about two serious security flaws in Windows BitLocker that could allow attackers to gain elevated privileges on affected machines.

These vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2025-54911 and CVE-2025-54912, were publicly disclosed on September 9, 2025. Both issues are classified as use-after-free weaknesses and carry an Important severity rating.

Administrators and users are urged to apply the latest patches immediately to protect their systems from potential attacks.

Vulnerability Details

The two vulnerabilities affect the BitLocker drive encryption feature built into Windows. BitLocker is widely used to protect data on disks by encrypting the entire volume.

Attackers who can exploit these flaws may run code with higher permissions than intended, potentially leading to full control of the system.

While both weaknesses require local access and some user interaction, they can allow low-privileged users or malicious software already on a device to escalate privileges without any additional authentication.

CVE-2025-54911 involves a use-after-free error that occurs when BitLocker handles certain memory objects. An attacker with local access can craft a specially designed request that triggers this flaw, causing BitLocker to access freed memory.

This leads to memory corruption and allows code execution in a higher security context. The vulnerability carries a CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.3 and a temporal score of 6.4, reflecting additional factors such as exploit code maturity and the availability of workarounds.

CVE-2025-54912 is a similar use-after-free issue but does not require any user interface prompts to be displayed.

This means exploitation can be fully silent if the attacker already has low-level access. The base CVSS score for this flaw is 7.8, with a temporal score of 6.8. Both flaws share the same attack vector (local), low access complexity, and partial user interaction requirements.

Microsoft has published security updates for supported Windows versions, including Windows 10 and Windows 11.

These updates correct the memory management errors in BitLocker, preventing use-after-free conditions from occurring.

Administrators should use Windows Update or enterprise patch management tools to deploy the fixes as soon as possible.

Systems that cannot be updated immediately can mitigate risk by restricting local user privileges and disabling BitLocker until patches are installed. However, disabling BitLocker reduces disk security and is not recommended as a long-term solution.

Users are also advised to monitor logs for unusual BitLocker service behavior and to audit local user accounts for signs of unauthorized privilege changes.

In high-security environments, consider applying additional endpoint protection measures that can detect abnormal memory access patterns and privilege escalation attempts.

By applying the September 2025 security updates without delay, Windows users can ensure their BitLocker encryption remains a strong line of defense against attackers seeking to elevate privileges on compromised systems.

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