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CVE-2025-41244 is a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting VMware Aria Operations, VMware Tools, and open-vm-tools in Linux guest virtual machines. The flaw is exposed through VMware guest service discovery functionality used when a VM is managed by VMware Aria Operations with the Service Discovery Management Pack (SDMP) enabled. Technical reporting indicates the issue arises from unsafe execution of service version checks in service discovery logic, including the get-versions.sh workflow in open-vm-tools, where overly broad regular-expression matching can identify attacker-controlled executables in writable locations and invoke them with elevated privileges. In practice, a non-administrative local user on the guest can stage a malicious binary so that service discovery treats it as a legitimate service executable and runs it in a privileged context. Depending on deployment mode, the vulnerable execution path resides either in VMware Aria Operations credential-based service discovery or in VMware Tools credential-less service discovery. Successful exploitation results in privilege escalation to root on the same guest VM.
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No valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 2 candidates as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.
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149 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A critical privilege escalation vulnerability affecting VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools, reported as exploited for an extended period.
A high-severity vulnerability affecting VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools that CISA has tagged as actively exploited.
A high-severity vulnerability affecting VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools, reported as exploited in zero-day attacks attributed to Chinese hackers.
A high-severity vulnerability in VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tools that was exploited as a zero-day by Chinese hackers.
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Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
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