CVE-2025-22226 is an information disclosure vulnerability affecting VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion products. The root cause is an out-of-bounds read in the HGFS (Host-Guest File System) component, which allows a malicious actor with administrative privileges on a virtual machine to leak memory from the vmx process. The vmx process is responsible for managing the virtual machine's execution, and leaking its memory can expose sensitive information such as cryptographic keys, credentials, or other confidential data residing in the hypervisor's memory space. The vulnerability affects ESXi versions 7.0 and 8.0, and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.1, indicating a high severity level. The CVSS vector (AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N) suggests that the attack requires local access (AV:L) but no privileges (PR:N) or user interaction (UI:N), and the scope is changed (S:C), meaning the vulnerability impacts resources beyond the initially vulnerable component. The primary impact is confidentiality loss (C:H), with no impact on integrity or availability. Although no known exploits are currently in the wild, the vulnerability is significant due to the potential exposure of sensitive hypervisor memory by an attacker who already has administrative access to a VM. This could facilitate further lateral movement or privilege escalation within virtualized environments. The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-125 (Out-of-bounds Read), a common memory safety issue that can lead to information leakage.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a substantial risk, especially for those heavily reliant on VMware virtualization technologies in their data centers and cloud infrastructure. The ability for an attacker with administrative VM access to leak hypervisor memory could compromise sensitive corporate data, intellectual property, or customer information. This is particularly critical for sectors such as finance, healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure, where confidentiality breaches can have severe regulatory and reputational consequences under GDPR and other data protection laws. Additionally, the vulnerability could be leveraged in multi-tenant cloud environments to breach isolation boundaries, risking data leakage between customers. The lack of requirement for user interaction and privileges beyond VM admin access lowers the barrier for exploitation once initial access is obtained, increasing the threat surface. Although no public exploits are known yet, the high severity and potential for sensitive data exposure necessitate urgent attention.

European organizations should prioritize patching affected VMware products as soon as official updates become available from VMware. Until patches are released, organizations should implement strict access controls to limit administrative privileges on virtual machines, ensuring only trusted personnel have such access. Monitoring and auditing VM administrative activities can help detect suspicious behavior indicative of exploitation attempts. Network segmentation should be employed to isolate management and virtualization infrastructure from general user networks to reduce attack surface. Additionally, organizations should consider deploying runtime memory protection and anomaly detection tools capable of identifying unusual memory access patterns within hypervisor processes. For cloud service providers, enforcing strict tenant isolation and continuous security assessments of virtualization layers is critical. Finally, organizations should review and update incident response plans to include scenarios involving hypervisor memory leaks and information disclosure.