CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-41244 — Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools Privilege Defined with Unsafe Actions Vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8 CISA KEV

VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability. A malicious local actor with non-administrative privileges having access to a VM with VMware Tools installed and managed by Aria Operations with SDMP enabled may exploit this vulnerability to escalate privileges to root on the same VM.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2025-09-29
CISA KEV
Known exploited
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-267

Affected products

  • vmware / aria_operations
  • vmware / cloud_foundation
  • vmware / cloud_foundation_operations / 9.0
  • vmware / open_vm_tools
  • vmware / open_vm_tools / 13.0.0
  • vmware / telco_cloud_infrastructure

Showing 6 representative product identities from 10 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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