CVE-2025-29952 is a vulnerability identified in the AMD EPYC™ 9005 Series processors, specifically within the Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) firmware component. The root cause is a use of an uninitialized variable (CWE-457) in the SEV firmware, which governs the protection and encryption of virtual machine memory. SEV uses Reverse Map Table (RMP) entries to track memory encryption states and ownership. Improper initialization can lead to corruption of RMP-covered memory, undermining the integrity guarantees of guest virtual machines. An attacker with administrative privileges on the host system can exploit this flaw to manipulate the memory mappings, potentially causing guest memory corruption or integrity loss. The vulnerability does not directly expose confidential data or cause denial of service but compromises the trustworthiness of guest memory contents. The CVSS 4.0 score is 5.9 (medium), reflecting the requirement for local privileged access and the impact limited to integrity. No public exploits are known, and AMD has not yet released patches. This vulnerability is significant in environments leveraging AMD EPYC 9005 processors for virtualization, such as cloud providers and enterprise data centers, where SEV is used to enhance VM security.

For European organizations, the primary impact is on the integrity of virtualized workloads running on AMD EPYC 9005 processors with SEV enabled. This could lead to corrupted guest memory states, potentially affecting critical applications, data processing, and compliance with data integrity regulations. Although confidentiality and availability are not directly impacted, loss of memory integrity can undermine trust in virtualized environments, complicate forensic investigations, and increase risk of further exploitation. Organizations relying on SEV for secure multi-tenant cloud environments or sensitive workloads may face increased risk of insider threats or malicious administrators corrupting virtual machine memory. This could affect sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government, where data integrity is paramount. The medium severity rating suggests the threat is significant but requires privileged access, limiting exposure to insider or compromised administrators rather than external attackers.

1. Monitor AMD’s official channels for firmware updates addressing CVE-2025-29952 and apply patches promptly once available. 2. Restrict administrative privileges rigorously to minimize the risk of malicious or compromised administrators exploiting this vulnerability. 3. Implement strict access controls and auditing on virtualization hosts to detect unauthorized or suspicious administrative activities. 4. Consider disabling SEV temporarily if the risk of exploitation outweighs the benefits of encrypted virtualization until patches are applied. 5. Employ additional integrity verification mechanisms at the hypervisor or guest OS level to detect memory corruption. 6. Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focused on virtualization infrastructure to identify potential exploitation attempts. 7. Use hardware and software inventory tools to identify all AMD EPYC 9005 processors in use and prioritize remediation in critical environments.