VMware Faces Critical Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion

On Tuesday morning, Broadcom issued a security alert to VMware users, warning of three critical zero-day vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited. These flaws, identified as CVE-2025-22224, CVE-2025-22225, and CVE-2025-22226, affect VMware’s ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion products. Although patches have been made available for each affected product, no workarounds are currently offered. This article dives into the details of these vulnerabilities and their implications for VMware customers.

the Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Broadcom’s recent security alert highlights three serious vulnerabilities that affect VMware products:

CVE-2025-22224: This critical vulnerability, affecting VMware ESXi and Workstation, is a heap overflow in the VMCI component. It allows attackers with local admin privileges on a virtual machine (VM) to execute arbitrary code on the host’s VMX process, potentially leading to a complete system compromise.
CVE-2025-22225: This high-severity flaw affects VMware ESXi and involves an arbitrary file write issue. Attackers with access to the VMX process can trigger kernel-level writes, which could result in a “VM escape” — breaking out of the virtual machine environment and gaining control over the hypervisor.
CVE-2025-22226: Affecting ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion, this high-severity information disclosure vulnerability arises from an out-of-bounds read bug in the HGFS component. With administrative privileges in the VM, attackers can leak sensitive data from the VMX process, potentially exposing critical system information.

Despite the severity of these vulnerabilities, Broadcom has indicated that there is no public record of active exploits involving these flaws yet. However, it is noted that exploitation requires elevated privileges, pointing to targeted attacks where the attacker has already gained access to the system. These vulnerabilities, which could lead to a VM escape, allow an attacker to move from the compromised guest OS into the hypervisor itself. Broadcom acknowledged that these flaws were discovered thanks to reports from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center.

What Undercode Says: A Deeper Analysis

The vulnerabilities identified by Broadcom have serious implications for both individual users and organizations relying on VMware products for virtualization. VMware’s ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion are widely used in enterprise environments for managing virtual machines, making them attractive targets for cyber attackers.

These vulnerabilities are a stark reminder of the growing complexity and risks associated with virtual environments. A successful exploit could allow an attacker to break out of a virtual machine and escalate privileges to gain control over the host system. This type of “VM escape” is especially concerning because it could enable attackers to compromise the hypervisor itself, which is often considered a highly trusted environment. Once inside, attackers could cause widespread damage or use the hypervisor as a launching point for further attacks.

The fact that these vulnerabilities are being actively exploited in the wild—while still not publicly documented—suggests that they are being used in highly targeted attacks. Broadcom’s statement that elevated privileges are necessary for exploitation points to the likelihood that attackers are first compromising systems via other means, such as phishing or malware, before leveraging these flaws to escalate privileges and escape the virtual environment.

Additionally, the lack of available workarounds is concerning. Organizations should prioritize patching these vulnerabilities as soon as possible, as the patches released by Broadcom are the only line of defense available right now. However, given the lack of workarounds, this means that companies with critical systems running VMware products must act quickly to minimize risk.

Furthermore, the fact that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has not yet added these vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog is significant. The KEV catalog is a list of vulnerabilities that are actively exploited and should be patched urgently. This omission raises the question of whether these vulnerabilities are more widespread than previously thought and whether they have yet to be fully discovered.

The potential for widespread exploitation of these flaws is high, particularly as virtual environments continue to be central to modern IT infrastructure. Companies should remain vigilant, applying patches and continuously monitoring their VMware environments for any signs of unusual activity. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how these vulnerabilities evolve and whether new attacks or exploits come to light.

Fact Checker Results

CVE-2025-22224: This is indeed a critical vulnerability, allowing local admin privileges to execute code on the host’s VMX process. The severity is confirmed as high.
CVE-2025-22225: The arbitrary file write issue is correctly identified as a serious flaw that could lead to a VM escape, posing a significant risk to VMware ESXi.
CVE-2025-22226: The information disclosure vulnerability is high-severity and confirmed to leak sensitive data, as described.

References:

Reported By: https://www.securityweek.com/broadcom-patches-3-vmware-zero-days-exploited-in-the-wild/
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