VulnerabilityPublished 13 Jun 2025Updated 17 Jun 2025

CVE-2025-22242: VMware SALT · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects VMware SALTSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.6 Medium : upgrade to 3008.0.0 or 3007.0.0 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.6Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 3% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3008.0.0, 3007.0.0

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

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 13 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade VMware SALT to 3008.0.0 or 3007.0.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
VMware SALT	Affected >=3006.0.0 <3007.0.0 >=3007.0.0 <3008.0.0	Fixed in 3007.0.0 3008.0.0

AI-suggested

Restrict access to SALT master and minion systems to trusted administrators only, enforcing strict access controls and monitoring for suspicious activity.

Implement robust privilege management to ensure that only necessary users have high privilege levels required to exploit this vulnerability.

Apply network segmentation to isolate SALT infrastructure from general user environments, reducing the risk of local access exploitation.

Monitor logs and system behavior for unusual file read operations or worker process failures that could indicate attempted exploitation.

Educate administrators and users interacting with SALT minions about the risks of social engineering and the importance of cautious interaction with prompts or inputs requiring user action.

If you cannot patch yet, consider applying temporary workarounds such as input validation proxies or restricting access to the “pub_ret” method if configurable.

Conduct penetration testing and vulnerability assessments focusing on insider threat scenarios and local privilege escalation paths related to SALT.

Description

Worker process denial of service through file read operation. .A vulnerability exists in the Master's “pub_ret” method which is exposed to all minions. The un-sanitized input value “jid” is used to construct a path which is then opened for reading. An attacker could exploit this vulnerabilities by attempting to read from a filename that will not return any data, e.g.by targeting a pipe node on the proc file system.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-22242 can be significant in environments where VMware SALT is deployed for configuration management and automation. The denial-of-service condition on worker processes could disrupt critical automation workflows, leading to operational downtime and delayed response to infrastructure changes. The high confidentiality impact suggests that sensitive information managed or accessible through SALT could be exposed, posing compliance risks under GDPR and other data protection regulations prevalent in Europe. Organizations relying heavily on SALT for managing large-scale IT infrastructure, especially in sectors like finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, may face increased risk of service disruption and data leakage. The requirement for local access and high privileges means that the threat is more pronounced in environments with multiple administrators or where insider threats are a concern. Additionally, the need for user interaction implies that social engineering or phishing could be used to facilitate exploitation, increasing the attack surface. The absence of known exploits in the wild provides a window for proactive mitigation, but the medium severity rating should not lead to complacency given the potential operational and confidentiality impacts.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 13 Jun 2025, 07:34 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

Related threats