Privilege Escalation in F5 BIG-IP iControl REST and tmsh
CVE-2025-59481 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP affecting an undisclosed command exposed through the iControl REST management API and the BIG-IP TMOS Shell (tmsh). According to the provided content, an authenticated attacker with at least the Resource Administrator role can execute arbitrary system commands with higher privileges than intended, allowing the attacker to cross a security boundary. The issue is described as stemming from improper privilege separation and unnecessary or excessive privileges assigned to certain management commands. In practice, this undermines BIG-IP's role-based access control model by permitting a user with limited administrative rights to reach system-level command execution through management-plane functionality.
Are you exposed to this one?
Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.
Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
5 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A high-severity vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP, requiring authentication for exploitation. Not currently known to be exploited in the wild.
A privilege escalation vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP products, involving iControl REST and TMOS Shell, allowing security bypass and unnecessary privilege execution in appliance mode.
An F5 BIG-IP privilege escalation vulnerability allowing an authenticated resource administrator with REST API or tmsh access to execute system-level commands.
A privilege escalation vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP iControl REST API and TMOS Shell (tmsh) that allows authenticated attackers with resource administrator privileges to execute arbitrary system commands with elevated privileges.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.