CVE-2025-46840 is a high-severity Improper Authorization vulnerability (CWE-285) affecting Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) versions 6.5.22 and earlier. This vulnerability allows a low-privileged attacker to bypass security controls and escalate privileges within the AEM environment. The flaw stems from insufficient authorization checks, enabling unauthorized access to sensitive functions or data. Exploitation requires user interaction, such as tricking a user into performing an action or clicking a malicious link, which then allows the attacker to hijack the victim's session. The vulnerability impacts confidentiality and integrity at a high level by enabling session takeover and unauthorized access to protected resources. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 8.7, reflecting network attack vector, low attack complexity, low privileges required, user interaction needed, scope change, and high impact on confidentiality and integrity, but no impact on availability. No known exploits are currently reported in the wild, and no patches have been linked yet. Given the widespread use of Adobe Experience Manager in enterprise content management and digital experience platforms, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to organizations relying on AEM for web content delivery and management.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-46840 could be substantial. Adobe Experience Manager is widely used by enterprises, government agencies, and public sector organizations across Europe for managing digital content and customer experiences. Successful exploitation could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive corporate or personal data, manipulation of web content, and session hijacking, potentially damaging brand reputation and violating data protection regulations such as GDPR. The confidentiality and integrity of data managed by AEM could be compromised, leading to data breaches or unauthorized content changes. Given the requirement for user interaction, phishing or social engineering campaigns targeting employees or administrators could be leveraged to exploit this vulnerability. The absence of known exploits in the wild currently provides a window for proactive mitigation, but the high CVSS score indicates that once exploited, the consequences could be severe, including loss of trust and regulatory penalties.

European organizations should prioritize the following mitigation steps: 1) Immediately review and monitor user privileges within Adobe Experience Manager to ensure the principle of least privilege is enforced, minimizing the risk from low-privileged accounts. 2) Implement strict access controls and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all AEM administrative and user accounts to reduce the likelihood of session hijacking. 3) Conduct targeted user awareness training to mitigate risks from social engineering and user interaction requirements for exploitation. 4) Monitor AEM logs and network traffic for unusual activity indicative of privilege escalation or session takeover attempts. 5) Stay alert for official Adobe patches or security advisories and apply updates promptly once available. 6) Consider deploying web application firewalls (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious requests targeting AEM endpoints. 7) Perform regular security assessments and penetration testing focused on authorization controls within AEM environments to detect similar weaknesses proactively.