TOCTOU out-of-bounds write in VMware ESXi and Workstation VMCI
CVE-2025-22224 is a critical Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition in VMware ESXi and VMware Workstation, specifically in the Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI). According to the provided content, the flaw leads to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious actor with local administrative privileges inside a guest virtual machine can exploit the issue to achieve code execution in the context of the virtual machine’s VMX process running on the host. The vulnerability is described by VMware/Broadcom as one of a set of flaws that can be chained to compromise the hypervisor from a guest VM, and the content indicates it was observed as exploited in the wild.
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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
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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
37 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A critical vulnerability affecting VMware ESXi and VMware Workstation (mentioned as a prior VMware zero-day disclosure).
An actively exploited VMware vulnerability (TOCTOU leading to out-of-bounds write) affecting ESXi/Workstation/Fusion.
A VMware ESXi vulnerability reportedly chained with CVE-2025-22225 in observed attacks.
A heap overflow vulnerability in the VMware VMCI driver, described as part of a chained ESXi/VMware escape exploit set.
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.