CVE-2024-29060 is a vulnerability identified in Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10, classified under CWE-284 for improper access control. This flaw allows an attacker with low privileges to elevate their access rights, potentially gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information or performing privileged actions within the development environment. The vulnerability requires the attacker to have network access and some level of user interaction, which limits remote exploitation but still poses a significant risk in environments where multiple users share development resources or where malicious insiders exist. The CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.7 reflects a medium severity, with high impact on confidentiality and integrity, indicating that successful exploitation could lead to data breaches or unauthorized code modifications. The attack complexity is high, requiring specific conditions and user interaction, and privileges required are low, meaning an attacker with limited access could exploit it. No public exploits or active exploitation have been reported yet, but the vulnerability is publicly disclosed and should be addressed promptly. The lack of an official patch at the time of publication means organizations must rely on interim mitigations and monitoring until updates are released.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a risk primarily to software development teams and environments using Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10. Exploitation could lead to unauthorized access to proprietary source code, intellectual property theft, or insertion of malicious code into software builds, undermining software integrity and confidentiality. This could have downstream effects on product security and compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR. Organizations with shared development environments or remote development setups are particularly at risk. The medium severity score indicates that while the vulnerability is not trivially exploitable, the potential damage to confidentiality and integrity is significant. Availability impact is low, so service disruption is unlikely. The absence of known exploits reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, especially as attackers may develop exploits following public disclosure.

Until an official patch is released by Microsoft, European organizations should implement strict access control policies limiting Visual Studio usage to trusted users only. Network segmentation should be applied to restrict access to development environments. Monitoring and logging of privilege escalation attempts within Visual Studio should be enhanced to detect suspicious activity early. User education on the risks of social engineering and the importance of cautious interaction with prompts or network resources is critical. Employ application whitelisting and endpoint protection solutions to detect anomalous behavior. Organizations should plan for rapid deployment of patches once available and conduct vulnerability assessments to identify affected systems. Additionally, consider isolating build environments and using code signing to ensure integrity of compiled software.