CVE-2010-2743

high

Published 2011-01-20 · Modified 2026-04-29

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.2

Description

The kernel-mode drivers in Microsoft Windows XP SP3 do not properly perform indexing of a function-pointer table during the loading of keyboard layouts from disk, which allows local users to gain privileges via a crafted application, as demonstrated in the wild in July 2010 by the Stuxnet worm, aka "Win32k Keyboard Layout Vulnerability." NOTE: this might be a duplicate of CVE-2010-3888 or CVE-2010-3889.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-15985 local windows verified

Ruben Santamarta · 2011-01-13

Microsoft Win32k - Keyboard Layout (MS10-073)

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

Metasploit modules

post_windows/escalate/ms10_073_kbdlayout rank 300

Windows Escalate NtUserLoadKeyboardLayoutEx Privilege Escalation

Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

OS impact

Windows Affected 2 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
-	Affected	—
—	Affected	—

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.