CVE-2025-68118

What is this vulnerability?

CVE-2025-68118 is categorized as a critical Out-of-bounds Read flaw with a CVSS base score of 9.1. Based on our vulnerability intelligence, this issue occurs when the application fails to securely handle untrusted data boundaries.

FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol. Prior to version 3.20.0, a vulnerability exists in FreeRDP’s certificate handling code on Windows platforms. The function freerdp_certificate_data_hash_ uses the Microsoft-specific _snprintf function to format certificate cache filenames without guaranteeing NUL termination when truncation occurs. According to Microsoft documentation, _snprintf does not append a terminating NUL byte if the formatted output exceeds the destination buffer size. If an attacker controls the hostname value (for example via server redirection or a crafted .rdp file), the resulting filename buffer may not be NUL-terminated. Subsequent string operations performed on this buffer may read beyond the allocated memory region, resulting in a heap-based out-of-bounds read. In default configurations, the connection is typically terminated before sensitive data can be meaningfully exposed, but unintended memory read or a client crash may still occur under certain conditions. Version 3.20.0 has a patch for the issue.

This architectural defect enables adversaries to bypass intended security controls, directly manipulating the application's execution state or data layer. Immediate strategic intervention is required.

Risk Assessment

Impact on Systems

✅ Remote Code Execution: Attackers can overwrite the instruction pointer to redirect execution to malicious shellcode.

✅ Memory Corruption: Overwriting adjacent memory regions can corrupt critical application state, leading to privilege escalation.

✅ Denial of Service: Triggering segmentation faults results in immediate disruption of critical systems.

How to Fix and Mitigate CVE-2025-68118

1. Apply Vendor Patches: Upgrade affected components to their latest, non-vulnerable versions immediately.
2. Implement Input Validation: Ensure all user-supplied data is validated, sanitized, and type-checked before processing.
3. Deploy Runtime Protection: Use Precogs continuous monitoring to detect exploitation attempts in real time.
4. Audit Dependencies: Review and update all third-party libraries and transitive dependencies.

Defending with Precogs AI

FreeRDP contains a vulnerability (such as an out-of-bounds read or write) during the decoding of RDP graphics streams. Attackers send malformed graphical updates to crash the FreeRDP client or execute arbitrary code on the connecting machine. Precogs Binary SAST explicitly uncovers missing boundary checks in complex parsers.

Use Precogs to continuously scan your codebase, binaries, APIs, and infrastructure for this vulnerability class and related attack patterns. Our AI-powered detection engine combines static analysis with threat intelligence to identify exploitable weaknesses before attackers do.

Start scanning with Precogs →

Vulnerability Code Signature

Attack Data Flow

Vulnerable Code Pattern

// ❌ VULNERABLE: Out-of-bounds read
void read_data(char *input, int length) {
    char buffer[64] = {0};
    // Taint sink: reads beyond buffer size if length > 64
    memcpy(buffer, input, length);
}

Secure Code Pattern

// ✅ SECURE: Bounded read
void read_data(char *input, int length) {
    char buffer[64] = {0};
    // Sanitized boundary check
    int safe_length = (length > sizeof(buffer)) ? sizeof(buffer) : length;
    memcpy(buffer, input, safe_length);
}

How Precogs Detects This

Precogs Binary SAST engine explicitly uncovers memory boundary violations and unsafe memory management functions in compiled binaries.\n