The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-13609 affects the Keylime project, an open-source remote attestation framework that leverages Trusted Platform Module (TPM) devices to verify the integrity and trustworthiness of agents in distributed environments. The flaw arises from the system's acceptance of multiple agents registering with the same unique identifier (UUID) but different TPM devices. Specifically, an attacker with sufficient privileges can register a new agent using a different TPM device while claiming the UUID of an existing legitimate agent. This action overwrites the legitimate agent's identity within the Keylime system, effectively allowing the attacker to impersonate the compromised agent. Such impersonation can lead to bypassing security controls that rely on agent identity for trust decisions, potentially enabling unauthorized access, data manipulation, or disruption of services. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.2, reflecting its high severity. The vector indicates network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring high privileges (PR:H), no user interaction (UI:N), with a scope change (S:C), low confidentiality impact (C:L), high integrity impact (I:H), and low availability impact (A:L). The scope change indicates that the vulnerability affects resources beyond the initially vulnerable component, increasing the risk profile. No patches or known exploits are currently reported, but the vulnerability's nature suggests that it could be exploited in environments where Keylime is used to manage and attest TPM-based agents, especially in cloud, edge, or critical infrastructure deployments.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-13609 is significant, particularly for those relying on Keylime for remote attestation and trust verification in their IT infrastructure. The ability of an attacker to impersonate a legitimate agent undermines the integrity and trust model of the system, potentially allowing unauthorized access to sensitive systems and data. This can lead to data breaches, unauthorized command execution, and disruption of critical services. Confidentiality impact is moderate since the attacker gains identity impersonation rather than direct data exfiltration, but integrity impact is high due to the potential for unauthorized actions under a trusted identity. Availability impact is low but could increase if the attacker disrupts agent services. European sectors such as finance, telecommunications, energy, and government, which increasingly adopt TPM-based attestation for enhanced security, are particularly at risk. The vulnerability could also affect cloud service providers and managed service providers operating in Europe that use Keylime to secure their infrastructure. The high privileges required for exploitation limit the threat to insiders or attackers who have already gained elevated access, but the lack of user interaction and network attack vector make it a serious concern for internal network security.

To mitigate CVE-2025-13609, organizations should implement strict validation mechanisms to ensure that each agent's UUID is uniquely bound to a single TPM device, preventing duplicate registrations. This includes enhancing the Keylime agent registration process to verify TPM device identifiers against UUIDs and reject conflicting registrations. Regular audits and monitoring should be established to detect anomalies such as multiple agents claiming the same UUID or unexpected changes in agent identities. Access controls must be tightened to limit the ability to register or modify agents to only highly trusted administrators. Employing multi-factor authentication and role-based access control (RBAC) for administrative functions can reduce the risk of privilege escalation. Organizations should stay updated with Keylime project releases and apply patches promptly once available. Additionally, network segmentation and monitoring for unusual agent registration activities can help detect and contain exploitation attempts. Finally, integrating Keylime logs with centralized security information and event management (SIEM) systems will improve incident detection and response capabilities.