57 Patch Tuesday CVEs: Why AI Detection Matters Now

Most companies treat Patch Tuesday as an IT chore. December 2025 should change that mindset.

Microsoft shipped fixes for 57 vulnerabilities this month, including one actively exploited zero-day and two publicly disclosed zero-days. That isn’t just “a lot of patches.” It’s a clear signal that attackers are operating on a faster loop than most patch programs can handle—especially in December, when staffing is thin, change freezes are common, and help desks are already swamped.

Here’s the stance I’ll take: patching alone can’t be your primary control for zero-days anymore. It’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. What closes the gap between “vulnerability exists” and “patch fully deployed” is AI-powered threat detection and response that can spot exploitation behaviors—sometimes before the vulnerability even has a name your team recognizes.

What December 2025 Patch Tuesday actually tells us

December’s release isn’t random noise. The distribution of bug classes shows where Microsoft (and attackers) are spending time.

CrowdStrike’s analysis highlights these leading risk types by exploitation technique:

• Elevation of Privilege (EoP): 28 patches (49%)
• Remote Code Execution (RCE): 19 patches (34%)
• Information Disclosure: 4 patches (7%)

Windows dominated the release with 38 patches, followed by Microsoft Office with 14.

That mix matters because it maps to a common real-world attack chain:

1. Initial access (often via phishing, malicious documents, or compromised dev tooling)
2. RCE or code execution to land and run payloads
3. Privilege escalation to reach SYSTEM/admin
4. Credential theft, lateral movement, data theft/extortion

If you’re only measuring “time to patch,” you’re tracking step zero. Attackers are already practicing steps 1–4.

The December pattern defenders should care about

EoP volume is the tell. Privilege escalation flaws are how attackers turn a foothold into full control. When nearly half the fixes are EoP, it’s a reminder that endpoint compromise often isn’t a single exploit—it’s a sequence.

AI-based detection helps here because it doesn’t need to know the specific CVE to detect the sequence: suspicious process trees, abnormal token privilege changes, unusual driver interactions, exploit-like memory behaviors, or rapid tool chaining.

The actively exploited Windows zero-day: why “local” isn’t comforting

The headline risk is CVE-2025-62221, an Important (but actively exploited) Elevation of Privilege vulnerability in the Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver, with a CVSS 7.8.

It’s described as a use-after-free weakness that allows an authenticated local attacker with low privileges to escalate to SYSTEM. Microsoft confirmed exploitation in the wild.

A lot of teams downgrade “local privilege escalation” because it’s not internet-facing. That’s a mistake.

Why EoP zero-days show up in real incidents

A local privilege escalation zero-day is often the second punch, not the first.

A typical December scenario looks like this:

• A user opens a malicious attachment or runs a “normal-looking” script.
• The attacker lands as a low-privileged user.
• They pop SYSTEM via an EoP (like CVE-2025-62221).
• From there, endpoint defenses are disabled, credentials are harvested, and ransomware or data theft follows.

If your patch rollout takes 10–21 days (common in large enterprises), AI detection is the control that buys you those days.

Practical rule: If a vulnerability enables SYSTEM, assume it’s part of a ransomware playbook—even if the CVSS says “Important.”

What to monitor while you patch

While you’re deploying fixes, tune detection and response around behaviors that correlate with local exploitation and privilege escalation:

• Unexpected processes gaining high integrity/SYSTEM
• Unusual driver interactions or mini-filter driver activity spikes
• Exploit-like patterns: process hollowing, suspicious memory permissions, abnormal handle access
• Rapid chaining: script host → LOLBin → credential access tools

The goal isn’t “detect CVE-2025-62221.” The goal is detect the act of turning user access into SYSTEM control.

Two publicly disclosed zero-days: the new speed advantage attackers get

Public disclosure changes the timeline. Once details are public, defenders race to patch, but attackers race to operationalize. In practice, attackers often win the first lap because:

• defenders must test patches, schedule maintenance, and manage exceptions
• attackers only need one overlooked workstation or dev machine

December includes two publicly disclosed zero-days (both assessed “Less Likely” for exploitation, but that rating isn’t a comfort blanket).

GitHub Copilot for JetBrains (CVE-2025-64671): a supply chain-shaped risk

CVE-2025-64671 is an Important RCE in GitHub Copilot for JetBrains, CVSS 8.4, described as command injection. It’s notable for two reasons:

1. It’s in a developer tool—the place where secrets, source code, signing processes, and CI access live.
2. The scenario references malicious cross-prompt injection via untrusted files or MCP servers, and terminal auto-approve settings.

This is exactly where AI in cybersecurity needs to show up: not only in detection, but in guardrails for AI-assisted development workflows.

What I’ve seen work well is treating developer AI tools like any other high-trust system:

• restrict what plugins/extensions can execute
• log and alert on IDE-to-shell execution patterns
• enforce least privilege on dev endpoints
• separate build/signing from daily development machines

If your security program ignores the dev environment, you’re leaving a door open that attackers increasingly prefer.

PowerShell (CVE-2025-54100): the evergreen execution pathway

CVE-2025-54100 is an Important RCE in Windows PowerShell, CVSS 7.8, also described as command injection. It requires user interaction (social engineering), but no privileges.

PowerShell remains one of the most reliable execution surfaces in Windows environments because it’s everywhere, trusted, and powerful.

AI-driven detection is well-suited to PowerShell specifically because the signal is pattern-heavy:

• abnormal command-line shape (encoding, obfuscation, suspicious flags)
• rare module usage
• unexpected parent/child relationships (Office → PowerShell, browser → PowerShell)
• bursty execution across many endpoints

Good defenders don’t try to ban PowerShell. They focus on high-fidelity detections and fast containment.

Two critical Office RCEs: the Preview Pane problem that won’t go away

Microsoft patched two Critical Office RCE vulnerabilities:

• CVE-2025-62554 (type confusion), CVSS 8.4
• CVE-2025-62557 (use-after-free), CVSS 8.4

The scary part: exploitation can be triggered by crafted emails or links, and the Preview Pane can be an attack vector. This pattern keeps repeating; the analysis notes the Preview Pane has produced at least one critical vulnerability in most months this year.

The operational reality: email is still the front door

If your organization runs Microsoft 365 and Windows endpoints, Office-based RCE isn’t a niche risk. It’s a mass-exploitation candidate because:

• delivery is cheap (phishing)
• targeting can be broad
• user interaction may be minimal

This is where AI-based email and endpoint correlation becomes valuable:

• The email security system flags a suspicious attachment.
• Endpoint telemetry detects Office spawning unusual child processes.
• The SOC gets a single correlated story, not 15 disconnected alerts.

That correlation—done quickly—is what stops “one mailbox” from becoming “500 encrypted endpoints.”

What AI adds that patching and scanners can’t

AI in cybersecurity isn’t magic. The value is practical: it helps you act faster than your backlog grows.

Here are four ways AI-powered threat detection and response closes common Patch Tuesday gaps.

1) Detect exploitation before your patch window closes

When a zero-day is exploited, the first question isn’t “Are we patched?” It’s:

Are we being exploited right now?

AI systems can baseline normal behavior and flag anomalies consistent with exploitation, privilege escalation, or payload staging. That’s your early warning while IT works through phased patching.

2) Prioritize the 57 CVEs by real exposure, not just CVSS

CVSS helps, but it doesn’t understand your environment.

Smart prioritization weighs:

• asset criticality (domain controllers, dev build servers, exec laptops)
• exploitability (in-the-wild, public disclosure, low complexity)
• reachability (is the vulnerable component actually used?)
• observed attack activity (are we seeing related TTPs?)

AI can help rank remediation so your team doesn’t waste day one patching low-impact systems while high-risk endpoints wait.

3) Turn public disclosure into defensive readiness

Publicly disclosed vulnerabilities create a predictable attacker behavior: rapid experimentation, copycat tooling, and scanning.

AI-assisted threat intel and detection engineering can:

• ingest disclosures and map them to likely tactics
• recommend detections (process patterns, child process trees, suspicious scripts)
• identify affected software inventories faster

That means your SOC is ready hours after disclosure, not days.

4) Reduce human bottlenecks in the SOC

December reality: on-call rotations, vacations, and end-of-year projects.

AI-driven triage can handle first-pass analysis:

• group alerts into incidents
• summarize what changed on the host
• highlight likely root cause
• recommend containment steps

It’s not about replacing analysts. It’s about keeping response time low when staffing is thin.

A Patch Tuesday playbook you can run next week

If you want a practical workflow that combines patching discipline with AI-powered detection and response, this is a solid baseline.

Step 1: Split patching into two tracks

• Track A (48–72 hours): actively exploited zero-days, public disclosures, Office RCE with Preview Pane risk
• Track B (7–30 days): everything else, prioritized by exposure and criticality

December 2025 clearly puts CVE-2025-62221 and the Office critical RCEs in Track A for most organizations.

Step 2: Add “pre-patch protections” immediately

Before patches finish rolling out:

• increase monitoring for privilege escalation and Office child-process anomalies
• tighten PowerShell logging and alerting
• isolate high-value endpoints if suspicious activity is detected

Step 3: Validate coverage with proof, not hope

Use telemetry to confirm:

• which endpoints received the patch
• which endpoints still run vulnerable versions
• whether exploit-like behaviors are present anywhere

Step 4: Treat dev tooling as production risk

If you allow AI coding assistants and IDE plugins, apply controls:

• restrict auto-approve execution to trusted workflows
• monitor IDE-to-shell execution
• enforce strong secrets handling and endpoint isolation for build/signing

What should you do after December 2025 Patch Tuesday?

December 2025 Patch Tuesday—57 CVEs, one exploited zero-day, two publicly disclosed zero-days—is a clean reminder that patching is a race you can’t always win on speed.

The better objective is resilience: assume some systems will lag, assume exploit details will spread fast, and assume attackers will chain RCE and EoP to reach SYSTEM. Then build detection and response that can see those chains early.

If you’re reviewing your 2026 security plan right now, ask a blunt question: When the next zero-day drops during a holiday week, do we have enough automated detection and response to keep the blast radius small?