CVE-2025-41244
Description
A flaw was found in VMWare open-vm-tools. A malicious actor with non-administrative privileges on a guest Virtual Machine (VM) could exploit this vulnerability to gain root privileges on the VM. The issue lies in the service-discovery plugin logic, which can execute attacker-controlled binaries from writable paths such as /tmp. Exploitation requires the open-vm-tools-sdmp package to be installed and guest service discovery to be enabled.
Statement
This vulnerability was rated Important because, while it requires local code execution, the exploitation is trivial and leads to full compromise of privileged contexts such as root. The flaw lies in VMware’s service-discovery logic, which can execute attacker-controlled binaries from writable paths like /tmp. An unprivileged user who runs a process with a listening socket can have it invoked by the privileged discovery routine, resulting in arbitrary code execution. Only systems with guest service discovery enabled are affected; those without this feature configured are not exposed.
Exploitation requires the service-discovery plugin (open-vm-tools-sdmp) to be installed. Red Hat CoreOS (RHCOS) is not affected, as it only ships the standard open-vm-tools package, which by default, does not include the -sdmp subpackage. Customers concerned about exposure should use the command rpm -q open-vm-tools-sdmp to verify whether the impacted package is present on their systems.
Mitigation
There are two main ways to eliminate the risk of this vulnerability:
1) Temporary - Disable the guest service discovery features: Disable the servicediscovery plugin in the config or by running the command `vmware-toolbox-cmd config set servicediscovery disabled true` then restart the system.
2) More permanent - Uninstall `open-vm-tools-sdmp` then restart the system.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.8 | N/A | 7.8 |
| Attack Vector | Local | N/A | Local |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | Low | N/A | Low |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Other
Technical Impact: Other; Alter Execution Logic
Frequently Asked Questions
Not sure what something means? Check out our Security Glossary.
Want to get errata notifications? Sign up here.
