CVE-2025-69258
Published: 08 January 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-69258 is a critical-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability in Trendmicro Apex Central. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 28.4% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-7 (Boundary Protection) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly remediates the LoadLibraryEX vulnerability in Trend Micro Apex Central by requiring timely patching to fix the flaw enabling malicious DLL loading and arbitrary code execution.
Monitors and controls communications at system boundaries to deny unauthenticated remote network access to the vulnerable service, blocking the primary attack vector.
Enforces software integrity verification prior to execution, detecting and preventing the loading of attacker-controlled malicious DLLs into key executables.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Unauthenticated remote attacker exploits public-facing application vulnerability (T1190) to load malicious DLL into privileged process for SYSTEM-level RCE (T1068, T1055.001).
NVD Description
A LoadLibraryEX vulnerability in Trend Micro Apex Central could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to load an attacker-controlled DLL into a key executable, leading to execution of attacker-supplied code under the context of SYSTEM on affected installations.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-69258 is a LoadLibraryEX vulnerability in Trend Micro Apex Central, published on 2026-01-08. It affects installations of this security management platform and has 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), with associated CWEs including CWE-120 (Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input), CWE-290 (Authentication Bypass by Spoofing), and CWE-346 (Origin Validation Error).
An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low complexity and no user interaction required. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to load a malicious DLL into a key executable, resulting in arbitrary code execution under the SYSTEM context on affected installations, potentially granting full compromise of the host.
Trend Micro has published security advisories detailing the issue and mitigation steps, available at https://success.trendmicro.com/en-US/solution/KA-0022071 and https://success.trendmicro.com/ja-JP/solution/KA-0022081. Additional analysis is provided by Tenable Research at https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2026-01. Security practitioners should consult these for patch availability and workaround guidance.
Details
- CWE(s)