PAN-OS MACsec CAK Disclosure in PA-7500 NGFW Clusters
CVE-2025-2182 Published on August 13, 2025
PAN-OS: Firewall Clusters using the MACsec Protocol Expose the Connectivity Association Key (CAK)
A problem with the implementation of the MACsec protocol in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® results in the cleartext exposure of the connectivity association key (CAK). This issue is only applicable to PA-7500 Series devices which are in an NGFW cluster.
A user who possesses this key can read messages being sent between devices in a NGFW Cluster. There is no impact in non-clustered firewalls or clusters of firewalls that do not enable MACsec.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2025-2182 is exploitable with physical access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity and availability.
Timeline
Initial Publication
Weakness Type
Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information
The application stores sensitive information in cleartext within a resource that might be accessible to another control sphere. Because the information is stored in cleartext, attackers could potentially read it. Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information.
Products Associated with CVE-2025-2182
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Affected Versions
Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW:- Version All and below 3.2.449 is unaffected.
- Version 11.2.0 and below 11.2.8 is affected.
- Version 11.1.0 and below 11.1.10 is affected.
- Version 10.2.0 is unaffected.
- Version 10.1.0 is unaffected.
- Version All is unaffected.
- Version All is unaffected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.