Which versions of VMware ESXi are affected by CVE-2025-62623?

ESXi hypervisors with AMD-Pensando DPU drivers in your environment have an exploitable local privilege-escalation path that allows any local user to assume hypervisor control and access all hosted…

How to fix or mitigate CVE-2025-62623?

Within 24 hours, complete an inventory of all ESXi 8.x and 9.x hosts with AMD-Pensando DPU hardware and restrict local shell access to administrative users only. Within 7 days, deploy logging and monitoring for privilege escalation attempts on affected systems, document the business-critical status of each affected hypervisor, and establish standing subscriptions to AMD security bulletins (AMD-SB-2001) and VMware security advisories. Within 30 days, develop and begin implementing a remediation plan that prioritizes either applying vendor patches upon release or replacing affected hardware on critical systems; for interim risk reduction, implement network segmentation to isolate affected ESXi clusters and disable non-essential access to the ionic cloud driver where technically feasible.

VMware ESXi CVE-2025-62623

Q: What is the CVSS score of CVE-2025-62623?

CVE-2025-62623 has a CVSS 4.0 base score of 8.8 (High). CVSS vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.0%.

EUVD-2025-209813 HIGH

Buffer Overflow (CWE-119)

2026-05-13 AMD

VMware Privilege Escalation RCE Buffer Overflow Esxi 8 X And Esxi 9 X Hosts Using Amd Pensando Dpu Products

8.8

CVSS 4.0 · NVD

Severity by source

NVD PRIMARY

8.8 HIGH

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

vuln.today AI

7.8 HIGH

Local access with existing low privileges (AV:L/PR:L), heap-grooming makes it AC:H, and driver-to-host escalation with total compromise justifies S:C and C/I/A:H.

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

Primary rating from NVD.

CVSS VectorNVD

Attack Vector

Local

Attack Complexity

High

Privileges Required

Low

User Interaction

None

Scope

Lifecycle Timeline

Analysis Generated

Jul 23, 2026 - 19:02 vuln.today

CVE Published

May 13, 2026 - 02:58 nvd

UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

CVE Published

May 13, 2026 - 02:58 cve.org

HIGH 8.8

DescriptionCVE.org

A heap-based buffer overflow in the ionic cloud driver for VMware ESXi could allow an attacker to achieve privilege escalation, potentially resulting in arbitrary code execution.

AnalysisAI

Local privilege escalation in the ionic cloud driver used by VMware ESXi 8.x and 9.x hosts running AMD-Pensando DPU products allows a low-privileged local attacker to corrupt heap memory and potentially execute arbitrary code with elevated (host-level) privileges. The flaw was reported by AMD (AMD-SB-2001) and carries a CVSS 4.0 base score of 8.8 with a 'total' technical impact under SSVC. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis and EPSS is negligible (0.01%, 3rd percentile), consistent with SSVC exploitation status of 'none'.

Technical ContextAI

The vulnerability resides in the 'ionic' cloud driver, the ESXi kernel driver that services AMD-Pensando Distributed Processing Unit (DPU) SmartNIC devices. AMD-Pensando DPUs offload networking, storage, and security functions from the host, and the ionic driver bridges these hardware functions into the ESXi hypervisor. CWE-119 (Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer), realized here as a heap-based buffer overflow, indicates the driver writes past an allocated heap buffer - typically the result of missing or incorrect length validation on data crossing the driver/device boundary. Because the driver runs in a privileged hypervisor context, memory corruption there can translate directly into control over host-level execution. Affected products per CPE are limited to 'amd:esxi_8.x_and_esxi_9.x_hosts_using_amd-pensando_dpu_products', i.e. only ESXi deployments that actually have AMD-Pensando DPU hardware and the ionic driver in use.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: apply ESXi 8.0U3i, or move to a build that includes the fix - VCF 5.2.3.0 or 9.0.2 - on any ESXi 8.x/9.x host equipped with AMD-Pensando DPU products, per AMD bulletin AMD-SB-2001 (https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/AMD-SB-2001.html). Because exploitation requires local, already-privileged access to the host, the strongest compensating control until patching is tightening who can obtain that foothold: restrict ESXi shell/SSH and administrative access to trusted operators only, keep lockdown mode enabled, and enforce least privilege for host-management accounts (trade-off: reduced operational convenience for administrators). Where a maintenance window is not immediately possible, prioritize DPU-equipped hosts over the general fleet, since only hosts using the AMD-Pensando DPU and ionic driver are exposed. No feature-level disable is documented for the ionic driver itself, so patching remains the definitive remediation.