Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools Privilege Defined with Unsafe Actions Vulnerability
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.
A local attacker, with a low-privilege account, can achieve full data confidentiality loss, arbitrary modification of data, complete denial of service or system unavailability. Federal agencies are required to remediate by 2025-11-20 under CISA BOD 22-01.
This is a Software Vulnerability (CWE-267) (CWE-267) vulnerability in Broadcom VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools. 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. Exploitation requires local access, low attack complexity, a low-privilege authenticated account, and no user interaction required.
Probably yes if any of these apply:
Active exploitation documented in the wild. Threat-research write-up: https://blog.nviso.eu/2025/09/29/you-name-it-vmware-elevates-it-cve-2025-41244/
Manual remediation steps
Apply the Vendor Patch
This vulnerability is in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — apply the vendor's security update as soon as possible.
CISA 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.
References
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