CVE-2025-42946VulnerabilityPublished 12 Aug 2025Updated 13 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-42946: SAP S/4HANA (Bank Communication Management) · Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

Affects SAP S/4HANA (Bank Communication Management)Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.9 Medium.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.9Medium

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

EPSS: 0.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 61% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Adjacent
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: None
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

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

Attack Vector: Adjacent: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack, but the attack is limited at the protocol level to a logically adjacent topology. This can mean an attack must be launched from the same shared physical (e.g., Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11) or logical (e.g., local IP subnet) network, or from within a secure or otherwise limited administrative domain (e.g., MPLS, secure VPN to an administrative network zone).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
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: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
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: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 12 Aug 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 2026-10-25.

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 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

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
SAP_SE SAP S/4HANA (Bank Communication Management)	Affected =618 =720 =730 =103 =104 =105 =106 =107 =108	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

1. Immediate review and restriction of user privileges within SAP S/4HANA, ensuring that only necessary personnel have access to the Bank Communication Management transactions and methods. 2. Implement strict monitoring and auditing of privileged user activities related to Bank Communication Management to detect any anomalous access patterns. 3. Apply SAP security notes and patches as soon as they become available for this CVE to remediate the vulnerability. 4. Employ network segmentation to limit adjacent network access to SAP systems, reducing the attack surface. 5. Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focusing on SAP modules to identify potential privilege escalations or misuse. 6. Enhance logging and alerting on file access operations at the operating system level for SAP servers to detect unauthorized file reads or deletions. 7. Educate SAP administrators and users about the risks of privilege misuse and enforce strong authentication mechanisms to protect high-privilege accounts. 8. Consider deploying application-level controls or web application firewalls that can detect and block directory traversal attempts if feasible within the SAP environment.

Description

Due to directory traversal vulnerability in SAP S/4HANA (Bank Communication Management), an attacker with high privileges and access to a specific transaction and method in Bank Communication Management could gain unauthorized access to sensitive operating system files. This could allow the attacker to potentially read or delete these files hence causing a high impact on confidentiality and low impact on integrity. There is no impact on availability of the system.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a significant risk due to the widespread adoption of SAP S/4HANA in financial and operational environments. The Bank Communication Management module is integral to handling sensitive financial transactions and communications with banking institutions. Unauthorized access to operating system files could lead to exposure of confidential financial data, customer information, or internal credentials, potentially resulting in regulatory non-compliance with GDPR and other data protection laws. The ability to delete files, although limited in impact, could disrupt internal processes or forensic investigations. Since the vulnerability requires high privileges, the primary risk vector is insider threats or attackers who have already compromised privileged accounts. The medium severity score reflects the balance between the required privileges and the high confidentiality impact. European organizations with SAP S/4HANA deployments should consider this vulnerability critical in the context of financial data protection and operational security, especially in sectors like banking, insurance, and large enterprises where SAP is heavily used.

CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #6OWASP Top 10 A01:2025: Broken Access Control (opens in a new tab)
The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Architecture and Design
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks…
Implementation · Input Validation
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174).
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Authorization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Path Traversal (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic (opens in a new tab)
Manipulating Web Input to File System Calls (opens in a new tab)
Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 20 Aug 2025, 02:00 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-22

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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