CVE-2025-25500
Published: 18 March 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-25500 is a high-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Cosmwasm Cosmwasm. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 23.3% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-25 (Reference Monitor) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-25500 is a vulnerability in CosmWasm prior to version v2.2.0 that stems from a lack of runtime capability validation, enabling attackers to bypass capability restrictions in blockchains. This flaw, tracked under CWE-284 (Improper Access Control), carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N) and was published on 2025-03-18T14:15:43.493. Affected systems include blockchain platforms leveraging CosmWasm for smart contract execution, where the absence of validation allows contracts to operate without enforced capabilities.
Remote attackers require no privileges or user interaction to exploit this issue over the network with low complexity. By deploying a malicious contract that evades capability checks, they can execute unauthorized actions on the blockchain, such as altering state or performing operations beyond intended permissions, resulting in high integrity impacts without compromising confidentiality or availability.
Advisories reference a GitHub Gist detailing the vulnerability at https://gist.github.com/H3T76/8096a6ff9410f3a6d9a25db1a68ae657#file-cve-2025-25500, which aligns with upgrading to CosmWasm v2.2.0 to address the runtime validation deficiency.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-7225
Vulnerability details
An issue in CosmWasm prior to v2.2.0 allows attackers to bypass capability restrictions in blockchains by exploiting a lack of runtime capability validation. This allows attackers to deploy a contract without capability enforcement, and execute unauthorized actions on the blockchain.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability enables remote exploitation of a public-facing blockchain platform (T1190) via malicious contract deployment to bypass capability restrictions, directly facilitating unauthorized actions equivalent to privilege escalation (T1068).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Implements a reference monitor for runtime validation of capability restrictions, directly addressing the lack of enforcement in CosmWasm that allows unauthorized contract actions.
Enforces approved authorizations for access to blockchain resources, preventing attackers from bypassing capability checks during contract deployment and execution.
Applies least privilege to limit contract capabilities, reducing the impact of runtime validation bypasses by restricting unnecessary permissions.