Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild Confirmed confidence In CISA KEV

CVE-2025-22224

ESXi

VMware / ESXi · affected before ESXi80U3d-24585383

Watch CVE-2025-22224 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 9.3 · Critical
Confidence
Confirmed
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
1.6%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2025-22224 is an unauthenticated vulnerability affecting VMware ESXi and 4 other products. VMware ESXi, and Workstation contain a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) vulnerability that leads to an out-of-bounds...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is confirmed. Listed in CISA KEV.

Who is affected?

VMware / ESXi affected before esxi80u3d-24585383.

What should we do?

Prioritize remediation. Validate affected assets and apply vendor fixes on an accelerated timeline.

Overview

ESXi

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.

VMware Affected
ESXi
Before ESXi80U3d-24585383 Before ESXi80U2d-24585300 Before ESXi70U3s-24585291
VMware Affected
Workstation
Before 17.6.3
VMware Affected
VMware Cloud Foundation
5.x, 4.5.x
VMware Affected
Telco Cloud Platform
5.x, 4.x, 3.x, 2.x
VMware Affected
Telco Cloud Infrastructure
3.x, 2.x
Published
04 Mar 2025
Exploitation Reported
04 Mar 2025
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None

Tags

nessus_scanner cisa

CVE References

Exploitation evidence

Why Previdian marks this CVE as exploited

Third-party attestation and first-party sensor observation are shown separately so teams can judge the evidence chain.

Exploited in the wild

CISA

Recorded 04 Mar 2025

A trusted third party reported exploitation.

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Per-source evidence links for KEV attestations are available through the Previdian Pro API.

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Source Added
CISA First 2025-03-04 00:00 UTC

Detection

Operational artifacts and observed signals

Make the evidence actionable in scanner, SOC, and edge-control workflows.

Observed signals

Request targets
User-Agents
Callback hosts
0
0
0

Request targets and User-Agents available in Pro. Callback host details available in Enterprise.

Virtual patch status

No Previdian virtual patch is currently available. Future rules ship for ModSecurity, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF.

Learn about virtual patches →

Scanner Artifacts

Scanner and exploit-framework references linked to this CVE.

Scanner Reference Detected
Nessus https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/237304 02 Jun 2025

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v3.1

9.3 Critical

Potential damage if exploited. Separate from whether attackers are using it.

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

EPSS

1.6%

Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Previdian's warning comes from evidence, not this score.

Weaknesses

Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition CWE-367

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 09:25 UTC

    Nessus plugin available

    Scanner coverage available

  2. 11:56 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  3. 00:00 UTC

    Added to CISA KEV

    Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

  4. 04:29 UTC

    CVE ID reserved

    Identifier reserved by the CNA

Pro API

Automate this intelligence

Confidence, exploit status, sensor telemetry, PoCs, scanner integrations, mentions, and tags are available programmatically for VM, SOC, and CTI workflows.

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  • Evidence confidence and provenance
  • First-party sensor telemetry
  • PoC and scanner references
  • Affected versions and enrichment
  • Automation-ready JSON delivery

GET /api/v2/pro/kevs/CVE-2025-22224

Free JSON includes basic KEV fields 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2025-22224",
  "confidence": "Confirmed",
  "cvss_score": 9.3,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.01561,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}