CVE-2025-9389VulnerabilityPublished 24 Aug 2025Updated 25 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-9389: vim · Memory Corruption

Affects vimSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.8 Medium.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 4.0 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:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P

Base metrics

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: None
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Threat metrics

Exploit Maturity: POC

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

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable system 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 through terminal emulation (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., using social engineering techniques to trick a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: None: The successful attack does not depend on the deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system. The attacker can expect to be able to reach the vulnerability and execute the exploit under all or most instances of the vulnerability.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker requires privileges that provide basic capabilities that are typically limited to settings and resources owned by a single low-privileged user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system 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 Vulnerable System 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 Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Exploit Maturity: POC: Based on threat intelligence sources each of the following must apply: · Proof-of-concept is publicly available · No knowledge of reported attempts to exploit this vulnerability · No knowledge of publicly available solutions used to simplify attempts to exploit the vulnerability

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 24 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
vim	Affected =9.1.0000	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-9389, European organizations should prioritize updating vim to a patched version once available from official maintainers or trusted Linux distribution repositories. Until a patch is released, organizations can implement the following specific measures: 1) Restrict local access strictly by enforcing strong user authentication, limiting shell access, and using tools like sudo to control command execution. 2) Disable or limit the use of vim in environments where it is not essential, replacing it with alternative editors less prone to this vulnerability. 3) Encourage users to enable syntax coloring in vim, as anecdotal evidence suggests this may prevent successful exploitation. 4) Monitor systems for unusual crashes or instability related to vim usage, which could indicate attempted exploitation. 5) Employ application whitelisting and endpoint protection to detect or block exploitation attempts. 6) Conduct internal audits to identify systems running the affected vim version and prioritize remediation. 7) Educate users about the risks of running untrusted code locally, as local access is a prerequisite for exploitation. These targeted steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control, configuration tweaks, and monitoring specific to this vulnerability.

Description

A vulnerability was identified in vim 9.1.0000. Affected is the function __memmove_avx_unaligned_erms of the file memmove-vec-unaligned-erms.S. The manipulation leads to memory corruption. The attack needs to be performed locally. The exploit is publicly available and might be used. Some users are not able to reproduce this. One of the users mentions that this appears not to be working, "when coloring is turned on".

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-9389 is generally limited due to the requirement for local access and the medium severity rating. However, vim is widely used across many Linux and Unix-based systems in enterprise environments, including servers and developer workstations. An attacker with local access could leverage this vulnerability to cause denial of service by crashing vim or potentially corrupt data within the editor session, which might lead to loss of unsaved work or instability in automated scripts that rely on vim. In environments where vim is used in automated or scripted workflows, memory corruption could introduce reliability issues. Although the vulnerability does not directly allow privilege escalation or remote code execution, it could be chained with other vulnerabilities or misconfigurations to facilitate further attacks. European organizations with large developer teams, critical infrastructure relying on Linux systems, or those using vim in security-sensitive contexts should be aware of this vulnerability. The lack of requirement for user interaction means that once local access is gained, exploitation can be automated. The partial mitigation observed with syntax coloring suggests configuration-based workarounds might reduce risk temporarily.

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 1 Sep 2025, 01:05 UTC

Technical details

References

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