How severe is CVE-2025-22225?

CVE-2025-22225 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.2 (HIGH). EPSS estimates a 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2025-22225: VMware ESXi Arbitrary Write Vulnerability

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

VMware ESXi Arbitrary Write Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2025-03-04

Remediation due

2025-03-25

Ransomware

Known use

Required action
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

CISA notes
https://support.broadcom.com/web/ecx/support-content-notification/-/external/content/SecurityAdvisories/0/25390 ; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-22225

Description

VMware ESXi contains an arbitrary write vulnerability. A malicious actor with privileges within the VMX process may trigger an arbitrary kernel write leading to an escape of the sandbox.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CNA8.2 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableno

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 17, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2025-22225 to the KEV catalog on the day its CVE record was published. The median for entries added in 2025 is 26 days.
It is one of 33 VMware entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and one of 4 added in 2025.
Its current EPSS score (1.0%) is higher than that of 3% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	VMware ESXi	8.0 to <ESXi80U3d-24585383 8.0 to <ESXi80U2d-24585300 7.0 to <ESXi70U3s-24585291
-	VMware Cloud Foundation	5.x, 4.5.x
-	VMware Telco Cloud Platform	5.x, 4.x, 3.x, 2.x
-	VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure	3.x, 2.x

References

1 Links

Other references

https://support.broadcom.com/web/ecx/support-content-notification/-/external/content/SecurityAdvisories/0/25390

Record Details

Published

2025-03-04

Last updated

2026-08-04

Assigner (CNA)

vmware

Credited to

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CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.