CVE-2025-22225

What is affected

Vendor	VMware
Product	ESXi
Weakness	CWE-123

The vulnerability

VMware ESXi contains an arbitrary write vulnerability. Successful exploitation allows an attacker with privileges within the VMX process to trigger an arbitrary kernel write leading to an escape of the sandbox.

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.

US federal civilian agencies were required to act by 25 March 2025 under BOD 22-01. The deadline is a compliance date, not a measure of severity — it says nothing about how dangerous the flaw is to anyone else.

Ransomware

CISA records this vulnerability as having been used in ransomware campaigns. That is a confirmed observation, not an assessment of likelihood.

Where this comes from

Every field on this page is taken from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, last synced 12 Nov 2026, 18:28. Nothing here is our own assessment. For the technical scoring, see the NVD record below.

NVD record ↗ CVE.org record ↗