CVE-2025-37164
HPE · HPE OneView
A critical remote code execution vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-37164, has been discovered in HPE OneView.
Executive summary
A critical remote code execution vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-37164, has been discovered in HPE OneView. This flaw allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain complete control over the affected management appliance, posing a severe risk to the entire IT infrastructure managed by the platform. Immediate patching is required to prevent potential system compromise, data breaches, and significant operational disruption.
Vulnerability
This vulnerability is a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw resulting from an improper input validation weakness in an exposed API endpoint of the HPE OneView appliance. An unauthenticated attacker can send a specially crafted network request to this endpoint, triggering the vulnerability and allowing the execution of arbitrary commands with the highest system privileges. The attack requires no user interaction and can be launched from any network with access to the management interface, making it highly wormable and easy to exploit.
Business impact
This vulnerability is rated as critical severity with a CVSS score of 10.0, representing the highest possible risk. Successful exploitation would grant an attacker complete control over the HPE OneView appliance, which serves as a central management point for servers, storage, and networking infrastructure. The potential consequences include a full-scale data center compromise, leading to catastrophic business impacts such as the theft of sensitive corporate data, deployment of ransomware across critical systems, widespread service outages, and irreparable reputational damage. The attacker could leverage this access to pivot deeper into the corporate network, making containment and recovery extremely difficult and costly.
Remediation
Immediate Action: Immediately apply the security updates provided by HPE to patch all affected HPE OneView instances. Prioritize patching for systems that are accessible from less trusted networks. After patching, monitor for any signs of exploitation attempts by reviewing system and access logs for anomalous activity.
Proactive Monitoring:
- Log Analysis: Scrutinize web server and application logs on the HPE OneView appliance for unusual or malformed API requests, particularly to unauthenticated endpoints. Look for unexpected process execution or command-line arguments in system logs.
- Network Traffic: Monitor network traffic to and from the OneView appliance for connections to suspicious IP addresses or unusual data transfer patterns that could indicate command-and-control (C2) communication.
- System Integrity: Utilize endpoint detection and response (EDR) or file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools to detect unauthorized changes to system files or the creation of suspicious new files on the appliance.
Compensating Controls: If immediate patching is not feasible, implement the following controls to reduce the risk of exploitation:
- Network Segmentation: Restrict all access to the HPE OneView management interface to a dedicated and secured management network. Block access from general user subnets and the public internet.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF): Deploy a WAF with virtual patching capabilities or custom rules designed to inspect and block malicious requests targeting the vulnerable API endpoint.
- Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Ensure network IPS signatures are updated to detect and block known exploit traffic related to this CVE as they become available.
Exploitation status
Public Exploit Available: False
Analyst recommendation
This vulnerability represents a critical and immediate threat to the security and availability of the organization's core infrastructure. The highest priority must be the immediate patching of all affected HPE OneView systems as recommended by the vendor. Although this CVE is not currently on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, its severity makes it a prime candidate for future inclusion and widespread exploitation. System owners must act urgently to apply patches or, if patching is delayed, implement the recommended compensating controls without delay to mitigate this severe risk.