Revisiting CVE‑2025‑50165: A critical flaw in Windows Imaging Component

ESET researchers examined CVE‑2025‑50165, a serious Windows vulnerability described to grant remote code execution by merely opening a specially crafted JPG file – one of the most widely used image formats. The flaw, found and documented by Zscaler ThreatLabz, piqued our interest, as Microsoft assessed its severity as critical but deemed its exploitability as less likely. Our root cause analysis allowed us to pinpoint the exact location of the faulty code and reproduce the crash. We believe that the exploitation scenario is harder than it appears to be.…