VMware Vulnerabilities Exploited Actively to Deploy Ransomware

On March 4, 2025, Broadcom released emergency updates to address three critical vulnerabilities – CVE-2025-22224, CVE-2025-22225, and CVE-2025-22226 – affecting several VMware products, including ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion. Given the critical nature and active exploitation of these vulnerabilities, organizations must identify affected systems, apply the patches as soon as possible, monitor systems for unusual activity, and review their security practices. The vulnerabilities CVE-2025-22224 (CVSS 9.3), CVE-2025-22225 (CVSS 8.2), and CVE-2025-22226 (CVSS 7.1) enable attackers to escape virtual machine (VM) containment, hijack hypervisors, and deploy ransomware across entire clusters. Attackers then exploit CVE-2025-22225, an arbitrary write vulnerability, to escalate privileges and gain kernel-level control of ESXi hosts. From the hypervisor, attackers pivot to vCenter via SSH or exploit unpatched vulnerabilities, often leveraging lax inter-subnet firewall rules. Additionally, asynchronous patches are available for VMware Cloud Foundation, while Telco Cloud Platform customers should update to a fixed ESXi version. Finally, CVE-2025-22226 facilitates credential theft via hypervisor memory leaks, enabling lateral movement to vCenter and other critical systems.

This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Sat, 22 Mar 2025 11:50:13 +0000

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