vmware esxi CVE-2025-22224 vulnerability in VMware Products
Published on March 4, 2025

VMware ESXi, and Workstation contain a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) vulnerability that leads to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine may exploit this issue to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host.

Vendor Advisory NVD

Known Exploited Vulnerability

This VMware ESXi and Workstation TOCTOU Race Condition Vulnerability is part of CISA's list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. VMware ESXi and Workstation contain a time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability that leads to an out-of-bounds write. Successful exploitation enables an attacker with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host.

The following remediation steps are recommended / required by March 25, 2025: Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2025-22224 is exploitable with local system access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. It has an exploitability score of 1.5 out of four. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.


Products Associated with CVE-2025-22224

You can be notified by stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-22224 are published in these products:

VMware Esxi
 
VMware Cloud Foundation
 
VMware Workstation
 
VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure
 
VMware Telco Cloud Platform
 

What versions are vulnerable to CVE-2025-22224?