Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild Confirmed confidence In CISA KEV

CVE-2025-41244

VCF operations Privilege Escalation

VMware / VCF operations · affected before 9.0.1.0

Watch CVE-2025-41244 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 7.8 · High
Confidence
Confirmed
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
8.4%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2025-41244 is a vulnerability affecting VMware VCF operations and 5 other products. VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability. A malicious local actor with...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is confirmed. Listed in CISA KEV. Also confirmed by third-party sources.

Who is affected?

VMware / VCF operations affected before 9.0.1.0.

What should we do?

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

Overview

VCF operations Privilege Escalation

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.

VMware Affected
VCF operations
Before 9.0.1.0
VMware Affected
VMware tools
Before 13.0.5.0 Before 12.5.4
VMware Affected
VMware Aria Operations
Before 8.18.5
VMware Affected
VMware Cloud Foundation
Before 8.18.5
VMware Affected
VMware Telco Cloud Platform
Before 8.18.5
VMware Affected
VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure
Before 8.18.5
Published
29 Sep 2025
Exploitation Reported
01 Jun 2026
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None

Tags

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

CVE

Recorded 01 Jun 2026

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
CVE First 2026-06-01 10:43 UTC
CISA 2026-06-02 14:05 UTC
Tenable Blog 2026-06-02 14:21 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.

Scanner coverage

No scanner integrations recorded yet.

Virtual patch status

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

Learn about virtual patches →

No detection artifacts or sensor request patterns are available for this CVE yet.

Check back as sensor telemetry and scanner integrations are updated.

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v3.1

7.8 High

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

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

EPSS

8.4%

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

Weaknesses

Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions CWE-267

Recent mention · Tenable Blog

Inside the customer environment: Where threat actors, vulnerabilities, and exposed assets intersect

Tenable Research has developed a graph-based model linking 600+ threat groups to real-world customer exposures. It reveals which vulnerabilities sit at the intersection of severity, active exploitation, and organizational risk.Key takeawaysThe "patch everything" strategy is...

Read full advisory

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 14:21 UTC

    KEV confirmed by Tenable Blog

    Exploitation attested by an external source

  2. 14:05 UTC

    Added to CISA KEV

    Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

  3. 10:43 UTC

    Added to Previdian KEV Feed

    High-confidence, third-party attested exploitation

  4. 16:09 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  5. 09:30 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-2025-41244

Free JSON includes basic KEV fields 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2025-41244",
  "confidence": "Confirmed",
  "cvss_score": 7.8,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.08438,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}