Threats / Broadcom / CVE-2025-41244
CVE-2025-41244
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-08-04
Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and Tools vulnerability
Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools contain a privilege escalation vulnerability allowing local non-administrative users to gain root access on managed VMs when SDMP is enabled.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
A local attacker with non-administrative access to a VM running VMware Tools managed by Aria Operations with SDMP enabled can exploit unsafe privilege definitions to escalate to root, compromising VM security and enabling further lateral movement.
CISA KEV Yes · 2025-10-305EPSS 0.0788 (verify live)6Exploit Public PoC7CVSS 7.83CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: total4
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreExploit available
Public proof-of-concept exploit code is cataloged for this vulnerability.We link the existence of the exploit; we do not host or redistribute payloads.
Reported exploitation
5 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-10-30).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.0788 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
CVSS 7.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) · Affected: Broadcom, VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-267 CWE-267 — weakness family: Authorization / access control.CWE — CNA-assigned (CVE.org); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
CISA SSVC (triage disposition)
Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Technical Impact: totalCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.
Currency of the record
CISA added this to its KEV catalog 31 days after the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I gain initial access as a non-administrative local user on a VM running VMware Tools.
Business
Attacker establishes foothold within virtualized infrastructure despite restricted user privileges.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I identify that the VM is managed by Aria Operations with SDMP enabled, exposing unsafe privilege definitions.
Business
Management plane misconfiguration creates exploitable trust relationships between management and guest systems.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I exploit the unsafe privilege definitions to escalate my privileges to root on the VM.
Business
Attacker gains complete control of the guest VM, enabling data exfiltration, malware deployment, and lateral movement.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
05