VulnerabilityPublished 7 Jul 2025

CVE-2025-53185: Huawei HarmonyOS · Use After Free

Affects Huawei HarmonyOSSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.6 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.6Medium

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

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 0% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: High
Availability: Low

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

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the impacted component are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 7 Jul 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 26 Oct 2026.

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 or the CVSS exploit maturity 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
Huawei HarmonyOS	Affected =4.2.0 =4.0.0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-53185, European organizations should: 1) Monitor Huawei's official security advisories closely for patches or updates addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly once available. 2) Restrict local access to HarmonyOS devices by enforcing strict access controls, limiting user privileges, and employing endpoint security solutions to detect anomalous behavior indicative of exploitation attempts. 3) Implement application whitelisting and integrity monitoring on devices running HarmonyOS to detect unauthorized modifications or memory corruption events. 4) Conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments focusing on memory management and privilege escalation risks within the environment. 5) For critical systems, consider network segmentation to isolate HarmonyOS devices and reduce the attack surface. 6) Educate users and administrators about the risks of local privilege misuse and enforce strong authentication mechanisms to prevent unauthorized local access. 7) Employ runtime protection technologies such as memory protection and exploit mitigation techniques (e.g., ASLR, DEP) if supported by the device to reduce exploitation likelihood.

Description

Virtual address reuse issue in the memory management module, which can be exploited by non-privileged users to access released memory Impact: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may affect service integrity.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-53185 could be significant, especially for those using Huawei HarmonyOS devices in critical infrastructure, telecommunications, or enterprise environments. The ability for a non-privileged user to exploit a use-after-free vulnerability could lead to unauthorized modification of system services or data integrity breaches. This could disrupt business operations, compromise sensitive information, or degrade service reliability. Since HarmonyOS is increasingly deployed in IoT devices, mobile devices, and embedded systems, the vulnerability could also affect operational technology environments, which are critical in sectors like manufacturing, energy, and transportation. The medium severity rating suggests that while the vulnerability is not trivially exploitable remotely, the local access requirement means insider threats or compromised devices could be leveraged to exploit this flaw. European organizations with Huawei device deployments should be aware of potential risks to service integrity and prepare for incident response scenarios involving memory corruption or data manipulation attacks.

CWE-416Use After Free (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #7
The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.
Architecture and Design · Language Selection
Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
Mass Assignment (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.3 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

consumer.huawei.com/en/support/bulletin/2025/7/ (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 7 Jul 2025, 18:25 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-416

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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