CVE-2025-52638
Published: 16 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-52638 is a medium-severity Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity (CWE-345) vulnerability in Hcl Aion. Its CVSS base score is 5.6 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Escape to Host (T1611); ranked at the 5.0th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Likely Mitigating ControlsAI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Directly requires independent verification of matching output before adverse decisions, mitigating insufficient authenticity checks on data from external sources.
Use of approved PKI certificates provides verifiable data authenticity and origin for communications and artifacts.
Mandates provision of authenticity and integrity artifacts that enable verification of name/address resolution data.
Requires explicit verification of data authenticity from authoritative sources, preventing acceptance of unauthenticated resolution responses.
Control requires verification of data authenticity/integrity (e.g., checksums) after aggregation/packing, directly reducing exploitation of insufficient verification before transmission.
Time synchronization supports reliable freshness verification when checking data authenticity across systems or components.
Mandates verification of data authenticity for software, firmware, and information.
Provenance documentation and monitoring directly enables verification of authenticity for components and data throughout their history.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Root execution in generated containers directly facilitates container-to-host escape attempts.
NVD Description
HCL AION is affected by a vulnerability where generated containers may execute binaries with root-level privileges. Running containers with root privileges may increase the potential security risk, as it grants elevated permissions within the container environment. Aligning container configurations with…
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security best practices requires minimizing privileges and avoiding root-level execution wherever possible.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-52638 is a vulnerability in HCL AION that allows generated containers to execute binaries with root-level privileges. This issue increases security risks by granting elevated permissions within the container environment, contrary to best practices that emphasize privilege minimization. The vulnerability is rated with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.6 (AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H) and is associated with CWE-345 (Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity).
Exploitation requires local access to the system, high attack complexity, privileges at a high level, and user interaction from the target. An attacker who meets these conditions can achieve high impacts on integrity and availability, enabling unauthorized modifications and disruptions to container processes, though confidentiality remains unaffected.
The HCL support knowledge base article at https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0129410 details the issue and mitigation steps, which include aligning container configurations with security best practices such as minimizing privileges and avoiding root-level execution wherever possible.
Details
- CWE(s)