EUVD-2025-209814Severity by source
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
Local low-privileged attacker (AV:L/PR:L) with difficult heap exploitation (AC:H); hypervisor kernel compromise crosses into other components (S:C) with full C/I/A impact.
Primary rating from NVD.
CVSS VectorNVD
Lifecycle Timeline
3DescriptionCVE.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
Privilege escalation in the ionic network driver on VMware ESXi 8.x and 9.x hosts equipped with AMD-Pensando DPU hardware allows a low-privileged local attacker to corrupt heap memory and potentially execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges. Reported by AMD (AMD-SB-2001) and tracked as EUVD-2025-209814, the flaw carries a CVSS 4.0 base score of 8.8 with total technical impact but high attack complexity. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis, and CISA SSVC rates exploitation as none with EPSS at just 0.01%, indicating no observed exploitation activity.
Technical ContextAI
The vulnerability resides in the 'ionic' cloud/network driver, which is the ESXi kernel driver for AMD-Pensando Distributed Processing Unit (DPU) SmartNIC hardware used for offloaded networking and infrastructure services. The root cause is CWE-122 (heap-based buffer overflow): the driver writes more data than allocated into a dynamically allocated (heap) buffer, corrupting adjacent heap metadata or memory structures. Because this driver runs in the ESXi hypervisor kernel/VMkernel context, controlled corruption of heap memory can be leveraged to overwrite pointers or function data and redirect execution, translating a memory-safety bug into privilege escalation. The affected CPE is cpe:2.3:a:amd:esxi_8.x_and_esxi_9.x_hosts_using_amd-pensando_dpu_products, meaning only ESXi deployments that actually have AMD-Pensando DPU cards installed and the ionic driver loaded are in scope.
RemediationAI
Apply the vendor patch: upgrade affected ESXi hosts to ESXi 8.0U3i, or to the builds bundled in VCF 5.2.3.0 or VCF 9.0.2, as documented in AMD advisory AMD-SB-2001 (https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/AMD-SB-2001.html) and cross-referenced at https://vuldb.com/vuln/363470. Because exploitation requires an existing low-privileged local foothold and only affects hosts with AMD-Pensando DPUs, the most effective compensating controls until patching are to tighten who can obtain code execution on or adjacent to affected hosts: restrict and audit access to the ESXi management plane and any guest workloads on DPU-equipped hosts, and prioritize those specific hosts in the patch schedule. If patching must be deferred, isolate DPU-equipped hosts to trusted management networks and limit VM tenancy on them; note the trade-off that these are operational restrictions rather than a code-level fix and do not remove the underlying heap overflow. Verify the exact fixed build for your ESXi minor version against AMD/Broadcom release notes before deployment.
Local privilege escalation in the ionic cloud driver used by VMware ESXi 8.x and 9.x hosts running AMD-Pensando DPU prod
Kernel and cross-guest memory disclosure in VMware ESXi 8.x/9.x hosts running the AMD-Pensando 'ionic' cloud DPU driver
Same weakness CWE-122 – Heap-based Buffer Overflow
View allSame technique Privilege Escalation
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today