CVE-2025-59703
Published: 02 December 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-59703 is a critical-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Entrust Nshield 5C Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Direct Volume Access (T1006); ranked at the 20.1th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-200272
Vulnerability details
Entrust nShield Connect XC, nShield 5c, and nShield HSMi through 13.6.11, or 13.7, allow a Physically Proximate Attacker to access the internal components of the appliance, without leaving tamper evidence. To exploit this, the attacker needs to remove the tamper…
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label and all fixing screws from the device without damaging it. This is called an F14 attack.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Physical access without tamper evidence (F14) enables direct volume access to unencrypted SSD (T1006), firmware modification on ARM SoC and EEPROM via JTAG (T1542.001, T1542.002), tamper log editing (T1070), and disabling tamper protections via firmware changes (T1562.001).
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
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.
The access control policy and procedures directly mandate and enforce proper access control mechanisms across the organization.
Device lock enforces restricted access until re-authentication, directly reducing unauthorized use of active sessions.
Supervision and review of access control activities directly detects and remediates improper access configurations or usages.
Explicitly identifying and documenting actions permitted without identification or authentication enforces proper access control boundaries by defining justified exceptions.
By automatically labeling outputs with security attributes, the control supports attribute-based enforcement and reduces exploitability of improper access control weaknesses.
Associating and retaining security attributes with data directly supports enforcement of access control decisions across storage, processing, and transmission.
Requiring prior authorization for each remote access type prevents improper access control over remote connections.
Requiring authorization of wireless access before allowing connections enforces proper access control for this access method.