CVE-2025-42916 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting SAP SE's SAP S/4HANA product, specifically versions S4CORE 102 through 108, deployed in private cloud or on-premise environments. The vulnerability stems from improper validation of input types (CWE-1287) in ABAP reports, which are custom or standard programs used to interact with SAP databases. An attacker who already possesses high privilege access to execute ABAP reports can exploit this flaw to delete the contents of arbitrary database tables. This deletion is possible if the targeted tables lack protection via an authorization group, a security mechanism in SAP that restricts access to sensitive tables. The vulnerability does not impact confidentiality, as it does not allow unauthorized data disclosure, but it severely compromises data integrity and availability by enabling destructive operations on critical database tables. The attack vector requires authenticated access with high privileges and no user interaction, and the vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 score of 8.1, indicating a high severity level. The scope is considered changed (S:C) because the exploit can affect multiple components or data sets beyond the initially compromised context. No known exploits are reported in the wild yet, but the potential damage to business-critical SAP systems is significant.

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability is substantial. SAP S/4HANA is widely used across Europe in sectors such as manufacturing, finance, logistics, and public administration, where data integrity and availability are paramount. Exploitation could lead to deletion of critical business data, disrupting operations, causing financial losses, and potentially violating regulatory requirements such as GDPR due to operational downtime or data loss. Since the vulnerability requires high privilege access, the risk is heightened in environments where internal threat actors or compromised privileged accounts exist. The loss of availability and integrity in SAP databases could halt supply chains, financial transactions, and reporting processes, severely impacting business continuity. Recovery from such an attack may require extensive data restoration and system audits, increasing operational costs and downtime.

Mitigation should focus on both immediate and long-term controls. First, organizations must ensure that all SAP S/4HANA systems are updated to versions beyond 108 or apply any vendor-provided patches once available. In the absence of patches, restrict high privilege access to ABAP report execution strictly to trusted administrators and implement rigorous monitoring of ABAP report activities. Review and enforce authorization groups on all sensitive database tables to prevent unauthorized deletion, ensuring that tables are not left unprotected. Implement strong segregation of duties to minimize the number of users with high privilege access. Employ SAP’s logging and audit capabilities to detect unusual deletion attempts promptly. Additionally, conduct regular backups of SAP databases and test restoration procedures to minimize downtime in case of data loss. Finally, consider deploying anomaly detection tools that can identify abnormal database operations indicative of exploitation attempts.