CVE-2025-52643
Published: 16 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-52643 is a medium-severity Protection Mechanism Failure (CWE-693) vulnerability in Hcltech Aion. Its CVSS base score is 4.7 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Malicious File (T1204.002); ranked at the 4.7th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-39 (Process Isolation) and SC-44 (Detonation Chambers).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Process isolation directly enforces sandboxing for untrusted file parsing operations, preventing specially crafted files from compromising beyond the isolated process and addressing the CVE's lack of proper isolation.
Software-enforced separation and policy enforcement implements sandbox mechanisms to contain untrusted file parsing, mitigating the vulnerability's exposure to integrity impacts with changed scope.
Detonation chambers provide isolated environments for processing potentially malicious untrusted files, directly countering the absence of sandbox isolation in HCL AION's file parsing.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Lack of sandboxing for untrusted/crafted file parsing directly enables local user execution of malicious files and facilitates privilege escalation via scope change.
NVD Description
HCL AION is affected by a vulnerability where untrusted file parsing operations are not executed within a properly isolated sandbox environment. This may expose the application to potential security risks, including unintended behaviour or integrity impact when processing specially crafted…
more
files.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-52643 is a vulnerability in HCL AION where untrusted file parsing operations are not executed within a properly isolated sandbox environment. This issue, linked to CWE-693, may expose the application to potential security risks, including unintended behavior or integrity impact when processing specially crafted files. The vulnerability received a CVSS v3.1 base score of 4.7 (AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L) and was published on 2026-03-16.
Exploitation requires local access, high attack complexity, high privileges, and user interaction from a privileged local user. A successful attack can result in low-level impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability, with a changed scope that may affect additional components beyond the targeted sandbox environment.
Mitigation details are available in the HCL advisory at https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0129410.
Details
- CWE(s)