Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-62353 is a critical-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Hiddenlayer (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 46th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as Enterprise AI Assistants; in the LLM/Generative AI Risks risk domain.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2025-62353 is a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) affecting all versions of the Windsurf IDE. It enables a threat actor to read and write arbitrary local files on an end user's system, both within and outside of current projects. The vulnerability is reachable directly or through indirect prompt injection, earning a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating critical severity due to its network accessibility, low complexity, and lack of prerequisites.
Any remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability without authentication or user interaction, potentially compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the victim's local filesystem. Successful exploitation grants full read and write access to arbitrary files, allowing data exfiltration, malware deployment, or system modification beyond the IDE's project scope.
Security practitioners should consult the advisory at https://hiddenlayer.com/sai_security_advisor/2025-10-windsurf/ for details on mitigation strategies and patches, as the vulnerability was published on 2025-10-17.
The involvement of indirect prompt injection highlights potential relevance to AI/ML-driven features in the Windsurf IDE, broadening the attack surface in AI-assisted development environments. No real-world exploitation has been reported in the available information.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-34890
Vulnerability Data
A path traversal vulnerability in all versions of the Windsurf IDE enables a threat actor to read and write arbitrary local files in and outside of current projects on an end user’s system. The vulnerability can be reached directly and…
more
through indirect prompt injection.
- CWE(s)
AI Security AnalysisAI
- AI Category
- Enterprise AI Assistants
- Risk Domain
- LLM/Generative AI Risks
- OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
- Classification Reason
- Matched keywords: prompt injection
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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V5.3.2
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces the intended directory access authorizations that path traversal would otherwise bypass.
Input validation directly neutralizes special path elements before pathname construction occurs.
Least privilege reduces the impact of any unauthorized file access obtained via traversal.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Patching/maintenance can remediate known path-traversal flaws in deployed software (partial prevention of exploitability) but does nothing to stop the coding defect from being introduced in the first place.
PR.AA-05 defines and reviews access policies but does not address code-level pathname neutralization, so neither direction prevents CWE-22.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing in development catches path traversal via static/dynamic analysis.
Secure SDLC mandates input validation and path sanitization that directly prevent path traversal.
Application security requirements include rules for safe file handling and canonicalization.
Secure architecture principles require least-privilege file access and directory isolation.
Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe path construction and mandate safe APIs.
Information access restriction limits which files an application may read or write.