CVE-2025-42902 is a memory corruption vulnerability classified as CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference) found in SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP and ABAP Platform. The flaw arises when the SAP application server processes a corrupted SAP Logon Ticket or SAP Assertion Ticket. An attacker, without any authentication or user interaction, can send such malformed tickets to the server, triggering a NULL pointer dereference that causes the affected work process to crash. This results in a denial-of-service condition impacting the availability of SAP services. The vulnerability affects multiple versions of the SAP kernel and platform, including versions 7.22, 7.53, 7.54, 7.77, 7.89, 7.93, and 9.14 through 9.16. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 5.3, reflecting a medium severity level due to the ease of remote exploitation without privileges but limited impact confined to availability. There is no impact on confidentiality or integrity, and no known exploits have been reported in the wild to date. The vulnerability could disrupt business operations relying on SAP systems by causing work process crashes, potentially leading to service interruptions or degraded performance. SAP has not yet published patches at the time of this report, so organizations should monitor for updates and apply them promptly once available.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2025-42902 is on the availability of SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP and ABAP Platform services. Since SAP systems are critical for enterprise resource planning, finance, supply chain, and other core business functions, work process crashes could lead to temporary service outages or degraded system performance. This may disrupt business operations, cause delays in transaction processing, and increase operational costs due to downtime. However, the vulnerability does not compromise data confidentiality or integrity, so risks of data leakage or unauthorized data modification are not present. Organizations with high SAP dependency, especially in sectors like manufacturing, finance, and public administration, may experience operational impacts. The lack of authentication requirement and ease of exploitation increase the risk of opportunistic denial-of-service attacks, although the absence of known exploits reduces immediate threat levels. Overall, the impact is moderate but significant enough to warrant proactive mitigation to ensure business continuity.

1. Monitor SAP Security Notes and vendor advisories closely for the release of official patches addressing CVE-2025-42902 and apply them promptly across all affected SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP and ABAP Platform versions. 2. Implement network-level access controls and filtering to restrict incoming SAP Logon Ticket and SAP Assertion Ticket traffic to trusted sources only, reducing exposure to unauthenticated attackers. 3. Enable and review detailed SAP system logs and alerts to detect abnormal work process crashes or unusual ticket processing activity indicative of exploitation attempts. 4. Consider deploying SAP EarlyWatch or similar monitoring tools to gain real-time visibility into system health and performance anomalies. 5. Conduct internal audits to identify all SAP systems running affected versions and prioritize patching and mitigation efforts accordingly. 6. Harden SAP system configurations by disabling unnecessary services or interfaces that process external tickets where feasible. 7. Educate SAP administrators and security teams about this vulnerability and establish incident response procedures to quickly address potential denial-of-service incidents. 8. If patching is delayed, consider temporary mitigations such as rate limiting or isolating vulnerable SAP instances from untrusted networks to minimize attack surface.