Critical VMware ESXi CVEs Have No Workarounds – Forward Networks Helps You Detect and Mitigate

Protect Your Enterprise from Actively Exploited ESXi Vulnerabilities

The recently disclosed VMware ESXi vulnerabilities pose a serious security risk, enabling attackers to exploit virtualized environments through VM escape, remote code execution (RCE), privilege escalation, and data leakage. With cybercriminals actively targeting these flaws, organizations must act swiftly to secure their infrastructure.

For customers using Forward Enterprise, the solution is already in place—our platform continuously updates with the latest CVEs, detects impacted systems, and provides a clear path to remediation.

Understanding the Risk: VMware ESXi Vulnerabilities in the Wild

On March 4, VMware issued an urgent security advisory (VMSA-2025-0004) regarding three critical ESXi vulnerabilities, actively exploited by advanced threat actors:

• CVE-2025-22224 (CVSS 9.3): A VMCI heap-overflow vulnerability allows attackers with VM admin privileges to execute code on the host system, leading to full VM escape.
• CVE-2025-22225 (CVSS 8.2): Allows arbitrary kernel data writes, bypassing sandbox protections and increasing the risk of privilege escalation.
• CVE-2025-22226 (CVSS 7.1): Enables sensitive memory leaks from the host’s VMX process through VMware’s Host-Guest File System.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center discovered these vulnerabilities, reporting that they have already been used in precision-targeted attacks by highly sophisticated adversaries. The growing trend of hypervisor exploits—such as the July 2024 attacks affecting over 20,000 ESXi servers—demonstrates the increasing risk to enterprises relying on virtualized infrastructure.

How Forward Enterprise Protects You

With every new CVE, security teams scramble to assess risk and mitigate threats. Traditional vulnerability scanning tools take days to deliver incomplete results, leaving organizations exposed. Forward Enterprise eliminates these inefficiencies by automating CVE detection, impact analysis, and remediation. We recently posted a blog describing the discovery and mitigation of a recent critical Palo Alto Networks vulnerability. The approach here is similar and equally swift.?

Here’s how Forward Enterprise streamlines protection against VMware ESXi vulnerabilities:

1. Identify Affected Systems Instantly (or verify your network is not impacted): Our platform continuously updates with CVE intelligence from NIST and vendor databases. When a new threat emerges, Forward Enterprise can detect its presence in the enterprise and pinpoint affected devices by verifying device versions and/or configuration to determine if the CVE is applicable to your environment.
2. Analyze Threat Exposure and Attack Surface: Forward Enterprise provides an assessment of how the vulnerabilities could be exploited within your network based on your exposure and the ease of exploitation. Using our digital twin model, security teams can analyze potential attack paths and determine whether compensating controls are in place before patches are applied.

After identifying ESXi instances through the inventory, it’s necessary to examine the platform details to determine risk. Since CVE-2025-22224 enables access to the underlying ESXi server from within a VM, it’s crucial to map out all associated container IP addresses on affected ESXi servers. For example, in the screenshot below, the impacted subnet is 10.117.170.100/24.

Forward Networks’ Blast Radius feature provides a detailed analysis of the threat exposure:?

Full path analysis provides additional details if needed:

This analysis confirms that the sjc-te-fw01 firewall sits between a VM on the vulnerable ESXi server and the internet. While patching ESXi systems running version 8.x remains the recommended remediation, organizations can mitigate exposure in the interim by updating the threat signature on this firewall until the patches are fully deployed.

Don’t Have Forward Enterprise? Ask Yourself:

• How are you detecting these vulnerabilities? Traditional tools take days to complete scans. Forward Enterprise provides instant visibility.
• How long does remediation take? Without automated impact analysis, security teams manually sift through alerts, delaying response. Forward Enterprise delivers a prioritized action plan immediately.
• Are you prepared for future threats? Tracking CVEs manually across an expanding infrastructure isn’t sustainable. Forward Enterprise ensures continuous monitoring and proactive defense.

Stay Ahead of the Threat—See Forward Enterprise in Action

The speed and sophistication of modern cyberattacks demand a proactive approach. With ransomware groups and nation-state actors increasingly targeting hypervisors, organizations must maintain ongoing threat exposure analysis and attack surface management to minimize risk.

Learn how Forward Enterprise simplifies vulnerability detection, prioritizes mitigation, and secures your critical infrastructure. Read more about our CVE detection and remediation plans here. To see the feature in action, visit Forward Networks at #RSAC2025 in Booth 1055, or schedule a demo today!