VulnerabilityPublished 29 Sep 2025

CVE-2025-57873: Esri Portal for ArcGIS · Cross-site Scripting

Affects Esri Portal for ArcGISSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.8 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.8Medium

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

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 12% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

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

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

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
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: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
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: 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: 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 29 Sep 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
Esri Portal for ArcGIS	Affected =10.9.1	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate this vulnerability, European organizations should: 1) Immediately restrict administrative access to the Portal for ArcGIS to trusted personnel and networks, employing strong multi-factor authentication to reduce the risk of compromised credentials. 2) Implement strict input validation and output encoding on all user-supplied data within the portal interface, especially for administrative functions, to prevent injection of malicious scripts. 3) Monitor and audit administrative activities and web application logs for unusual patterns indicative of attempted XSS exploitation. 4) Apply network segmentation to isolate the GIS portal from broader enterprise networks, limiting the blast radius of any successful attack. 5) Engage with Esri support and subscribe to security advisories to obtain and deploy patches or updates as soon as they become available. 6) Educate administrative users about the risks of interacting with untrusted links or inputs within the portal environment to reduce the likelihood of successful user interaction exploitation. 7) Consider deploying Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block reflected XSS payloads targeting the portal.

Description

There is a reflected cross site scripting vulnerability in Esri Portal for ArcGIS 11.4 and below that may allow a remote authenticated attacker with administrative access to supply a crafted string which would execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the browser.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability can be significant, especially for entities relying on Esri Portal for ArcGIS for critical GIS services such as urban planning, environmental monitoring, transportation management, and emergency response coordination. An attacker exploiting this vulnerability could execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of an administrative user’s browser, potentially leading to session hijacking, credential theft, or unauthorized actions performed with administrative privileges. This could compromise the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive spatial data and disrupt operational workflows. Although the vulnerability requires administrative authentication and user interaction, the potential for lateral movement and privilege escalation within an organization’s GIS infrastructure poses a risk. Given the widespread use of Esri products in European public sector agencies and private enterprises, exploitation could lead to data leaks, manipulation of geographic data, and erosion of trust in critical infrastructure systems.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/trust-arcgis/administration/portal-for-arcgis-security-2025-update-3-patch (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 29 Sep 2025, 18:43 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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