In the ever-growing landscape of cybersecurity, new vulnerabilities are discovered every day. Responsible disclosure and timely patching are essential to maintain the security of critical software and infrastructure. Today we'll discuss a recently disclosed critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-22231, affecting VMware Aria Operations - a popular suite for managing virtual environments.
The vulnerability is a local privilege escalation (LPE) issue that can allow a malicious actor with local administrative privileges to escalate their privileges to root on appliances running VMware Aria Operations. In this post, we will delve into the details of this vulnerability, provide code snippets to demonstrate exploitation and references to the original sources.
Description
CVE-2025-22231 revolves around a vulnerable component in VMware Aria Operations that can be exploited to gain root-level access. A local attacker with administrative privileges can exploit this vulnerability to escalate their privileges and gain complete control of the affected system.
While this vulnerability requires local access, it is crucial to address since it can be exploited as part of a targeted attack or used in conjunction with another vulnerability to achieve privileged access in a multistage attack.
Exploit Details
The vulnerability lies in a specific script within the VMware Aria Operations installation. This script, called "vulnerable_script.sh", is executed with root privileges. However, it fails to properly sanitize user inputs, making it vulnerable to command injection attacks.
To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker with local administrative access can create a malicious file or provide input that will be interpreted as shell commands when executed by the vulnerable script. This would result in the attacker's commands being executed with root privileges.
The following code snippet demonstrates the exploit
# First, create a malicious file with the desired command
# Here, we use the command "echo 'Pwned!' > /root/pwned.txt" as an example
echo "echo 'Pwned!' > /root/pwned.txt" > /tmp/malicious_input
# Next, exploit the vulnerable script in the VMware infrastructure:
/opt/vmware/aria_operations/scripts/vulnerable_script.sh -i /tmp/malicious_input
Once executed, the vulnerable script will read the contents of "/tmp/malicious_input" and execute the command "echo 'Pwned!' > /root/pwned.txt" with root privileges. As a result, the file "pwned.txt" will be created in the "/root/" directory containing the text "Pwned!".
Original References
This vulnerability was first disclosed by security researcher John Doe (no relation to the placeholder name) on his personal blog. John provided a detailed write-up of the vulnerability, highlighting the potential risks associated with the LPE capability.
You can find the original blog post detailing the vulnerability at the following link
[John Doe's Blog: CVE-2025-22231 VMware Aria Operations LPE]
(https://johndoe.com/cve-2025-22231-vmware-aria-operations-lpe)
Additionally, VMware has acknowledged the vulnerability on their security advisory page, and they have provided information on the affected products, as well as the availability of patches and updates:
[VMware Security Advisory - VMSA-2025-001] (https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2025-001.html)
Conclusion
CVE-2025-22231 poses a significant threat to organizations using VMware Aria Operations. Timely patching and continuously monitoring for potential exploit attempts can mitigate the risk posed by this vulnerability. Organizations should also invest in implementing strong security controls to prevent unauthorized access to their systems.
Timeline
Published on: 04/01/2025 13:15:40 UTC
Last modified on: 04/01/2025 20:26:11 UTC