What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2014-1812: Microsoft Windows Group Policy Preferences Password Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2021-11-03
• EPSS: 65.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2014-05-14 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-255

Description

The Group Policy implementation in Microsoft Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 SP1, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 Gold and R2 does not properly handle distribution of passwords, which allows remote authenticated users to obtain sensitive credential information and consequently gain privileges by leveraging access to the SYSVOL share, as exploited in the wild in May 2014, aka "Group Policy Preferences Password Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability."

Affected products

• Microsoft Windows 7: all versions
• Microsoft Windows 8: all versions
• Microsoft Windows 8.1: all versions
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008: r2-sp1
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012: r2
• Microsoft Windows Vista: all versions

References

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2014/05/13/ms14-025-an-update-for-group-policy-preferences.aspx
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2014/ms14-025
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2014/05/13/ms14-025-an-update-for-group-policy-preferences.aspx
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2014/ms14-025
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2014-1812

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