CVE-2025-2296
Description
A flaw was found in EDK2 (EFI Development Kit 2). This vulnerability allows an attacker to cause arbitrary command execution and impact Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability via improper input validation by local access.
Statement
This vulnerability is considered Important because it compromises a key security control in the boot chain, Secure Boot enforcement—by allowing an unsigned kernel to be loaded through the legacy fallback path when direct-boot signature verification fails. Although exploitation requires high privileges, the flaw enables a reliable and unintended bypass of a protection mechanism explicitly designed to prevent unauthorized code from executing during early boot. This loss of integrity in a security-critical stage gives attackers the opportunity to introduce persistent modifications, tamper with system state, or load manipulated kernels outside the trusted key database. The impact is therefore more significant than a moderate flaw, as it affects a foundational trust anchor rather than a user-space component, and can meaningfully weaken the platform’s security posture even under restricted privilege conditions.
Mitigation
To reduce the risk by disabling direct-boot mode, ensuring all bootable kernels are signed and present in the Secure Boot DB, and restricting privileged access to prevent attackers from introducing unsigned payloads.
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 | 8.2 | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Local | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | N/A |
| Privileges Required | High | N/A | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | N/A |
| Scope | Changed | N/A | N/A |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
An attacker could provide unexpected values and cause a program crash or arbitrary control of resource allocation, leading to excessive consumption of resources such as memory and CPU.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory; Read Files or Directories
An attacker could read confidential data if they are able to control resource references.
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability
Technical Impact: Modify Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
An attacker could use malicious input to modify data or possibly alter control flow in unexpected ways, including arbitrary command execution.
Frequently Asked Questions
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