CVE-2025-22225 is an arbitrary-write vulnerability in VMware ESXi. An attacker holding administrative privileges within a guest virtual machine and privileges in the VMX process can induce an arbitrary write to ESXi kernel memory, escaping the VMX sandbox. The flaw was addressed by Broadcom in VMSA-2025-0004 and was disclosed as actively exploited. It can be chained with CVE-2025-22226, an HGFS VMX-memory disclosure issue, and CVE-2025-22224, a VMCI TOCTOU out-of-bounds write issue, to facilitate a complete guest-to-hypervisor compromise.
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What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Patch, then assume compromise.
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
59 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
VMware ESXi sandbox-escape vulnerability cited as a prior example of ransomware exploitation.
A VMware vulnerability mentioned only in historical advisory context as one of the March 2025 zero-days.
A VMware VM escape chain involving HGFS and VMCI interfaces that allows code execution on the hypervisor from a compromised guest VM.
A VMware ESXi vulnerability enabling sandbox escape via VMX-related flaws, reported by CISA as exploited in ransomware attacks.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.