Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools Privilege Defined with Unsafe Actions Vulnerability (CVE-2025-41244)
Severity: high · Patch status: unknown · Since 2025-10-30 · CVE-2025-41244
Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools contain a privilege defined with unsafe actions 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. CISA added CVE-2025-41244 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on Oct 30, 2025, which means attackers are exploiting it in the wild.
What to do
- Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
- US federal agencies must remediate by Nov 20, 2025 (BOD 22-01); treat that as the outer limit.
Sources
All live incidents on Threat Watch
