CVE-2025-22224
VMware ESXi, and Workstation contain a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) vulnerability that leads to an out-of-bounds write.
High
Known exploited
- Severity
- 8.2 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 1.56%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 75.24% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- Yes
- In CISA's catalog since Mar 4, 2025
- Weakness
- CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
- CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
- Fix
- None yet
- No fixed version published
Exploited in the wild. VMware ESXi and Workstation TOCTOU Race Condition Vulnerability (VMware ESXi and Workstation). Required action: Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable. Due for U.S. federal agencies by Mar 25, 2025.
Description
VMware ESXi, and Workstation contain a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) vulnerability that leads to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine may exploit this issue to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host.
How to fix
No fixed version has been published yet. Until one is, remove or replace the package, or turn off or isolate the affected feature. This page updates when a fix ships.
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 8.2
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack vector
- Local
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- High
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Changed
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-367: Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
The product checks the state of a resource before using that resource, but the resource's state can change between the check and the use in a way that invalidates the results of the check.
How to prevent it
- Implementation: The most basic advice for TOCTOU vulnerabilities is to not perform a check before the use. This does not resolve the underlying issue of the execution of a function on a resource whose state and identity cannot be assured, but it does help to limit the false sense of security given by the check.
- Implementation: When the file being altered is owned by the current user and group, set the effective gid and uid to that of the current user and group when executing this statement.
- Architecture and Design: Limit the interleaving of operations on files from multiple processes.
- Implementation, Architecture and Design: If you cannot perform operations atomically and you must share access to the resource between multiple processes or threads, then try to limit the amount of time (CPU cycles) between the check and use of the resource. This will not fix the problem, but it could make it more difficult for an attack to succeed.
- Implementation: Recheck the resource after the use call to verify that the action was taken appropriately.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that some environmental locking mechanism can be used to protect resources effectively.
- Implementation: Ensure that locking occurs before the check, as opposed to afterwards, such that the resource, as checked, is the same as it is when in use.
CWE-367: Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
The product checks the state of a resource before using that resource, but the resource's state can change between the check and the use in a way that invalidates the results of the check.
How to prevent it
- Implementation: The most basic advice for TOCTOU vulnerabilities is to not perform a check before the use. This does not resolve the underlying issue of the execution of a function on a resource whose state and identity cannot be assured, but it does help to limit the false sense of security given by the check.
- Implementation: When the file being altered is owned by the current user and group, set the effective gid and uid to that of the current user and group when executing this statement.
- Architecture and Design: Limit the interleaving of operations on files from multiple processes.
- Implementation, Architecture and Design: If you cannot perform operations atomically and you must share access to the resource between multiple processes or threads, then try to limit the amount of time (CPU cycles) between the check and use of the resource. This will not fix the problem, but it could make it more difficult for an attack to succeed.
- Implementation: Recheck the resource after the use call to verify that the action was taken appropriately.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that some environmental locking mechanism can be used to protect resources effectively.
- Implementation: Ensure that locking occurs before the check, as opposed to afterwards, such that the resource, as checked, is the same as it is when in use.
References
Advisories
Other links
Timeline
- Added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Published
- Remediation due for U.S. federal agencies
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-wfhq-q4j2-c37m filelock: SoftReadWriteLock follows a lock tree swapped in after its first acquire and writes lock records into directories of the user running the lock | Low | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-fq56-3cx3-fjxp filelock: SoftFileLock stale-lock break removes a live lock file on a reused inode number and admits two holders | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-jqc4-5cvw-7w85 filelock: ReadWriteLock on the hard-link route deletes any directory another user renames onto its .filelock-* link directory name | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-9vhv-jxww-xfm5 filelock: ReadWriteLock on Windows acts on SQLite side files another local user places beside its database | Low | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-322m-ff4g-9vx9 Ghost: Server-Side Request Forgery in Bookmark Fetching | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-vv43-5jgx-7qv8 Electron: Local race condition in Squirrel.Mac update installation on macOS | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| EEF-CVE-2026-82761 Magic link single-use tokens replayable via TOCTOU race in AshAuthentication | Not rated yet | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
| GHSA-4v28-j6q3-5m4r Open WebUI: SSRF into internal services via DNS rebinding in the Playwright web loader | High | Same weakness, CWE-367 |
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