Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-7493

Published
30 September 2025
Modified
15 April 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 9.1
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0052 42th percentile
Risk Priority 59 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-7493 is a critical-severity Insufficient Granularity of Access Control (CWE-1220) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Services File Permissions Weakness (T1574.010); ranked at the 42th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement) — 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-2025-7493 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in FreeIPA, published on 2025-09-30, arising from a failure to validate the uniqueness of the krbCanonicalName attribute. This flaw, similar to CVE-2025-4404, occurs because while validations were added for the admin@REALM credential in a prior release, FreeIPA does not validate the root@REALM canonical name, which can also serve as the realm administrator's name. It is associated with CWE-1220 and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H).

An attacker with high privileges, such as host-level access (PR:H), can exploit this vulnerability over the network (AV:N) with low complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N). Successful exploitation escalates privileges to domain administrator, enabling administrative tasks across the realm and resulting in scope change (S:C) with high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H), including access to sensitive data and its exfiltration.

Red Hat has released security errata to address this issue, including RHSA-2025:17084, RHSA-2025:17085, RHSA-2025:17086, RHSA-2025:17087, and RHSA-2025:17088. Security practitioners should review and apply these updates promptly to mitigate the vulnerability.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A privilege escalation flaw from host to domain administrator was found in FreeIPA. This vulnerability is similar to CVE-2025-4404, where it fails to validate the uniqueness of the krbCanonicalName. While the previously released version added validations for the admin@REALM credential,…

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FreeIPA still does not validate the root@REALM canonical name, which can also be used as the realm administrator's name. This flaw allows an attacker to perform administrative tasks over the REALM, leading to access to sensitive data and sensitive data exfiltration.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1574.010 Services File Permissions Weakness Stealth
Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking the binaries used by services.
T1078 Valid Accounts Stealth
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion.
T1548 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may circumvent mechanisms designed to control privilege elevation to gain higher-level permissions.
T1556 Modify Authentication Process Defense Impairment
Adversaries may modify authentication mechanisms and processes to access user credentials or enable otherwise unwarranted access to accounts.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-35436Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2026-6388Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2023-31342Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2025-48517Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2024-21947Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2026-33825Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2023-32259Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2023-43040Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2024-11931Shared CWE-1220
CVE-2025-1278Shared CWE-1220

Affected Assets

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 4 hardening rules · 4 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V16.4.2
  • V8.4.2
  • V11.7.1
  • V13.2.4

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Least privilege explicitly demands that only the minimum necessary accesses are granted, eliminating the broad permissions that define this weakness.

AC-24 requires access decisions to be applied precisely and unambiguously to every request, structurally blocking insufficiently granular policies.

AC-3 requires enforcement of authorizations according to policy, directly compelling sufficiently granular rules so broad allowances cannot be introduced.

AC-4 enforces approved information flows with explicit source/destination rules, preventing overly coarse access policies from being deployed.

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.

PR.IR-01 mostly match
prevents

PR.IR-01's segmentation + zero-trust rules directly enforce minimum-necessary access at network boundaries, removing most instances of overly broad policy; CWE-1220 can still exist in application-layer or intra-segment controls that this single outcome does not address.

PR.PS-06 partial match
prevents

PR.PS-06's general SDLC practices can surface granularity issues during design/review (partial prevention) but do not specifically target access-control policy breadth, so they remove only part of CWE-1220's risk.

DE.AE-06 none match
degrades

CWE-1220 permits unauthorized access to sensitive assets but neither prevents nor impairs the delivery of adverse-event information to authorized recipients.

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.

degrades

Directly requires information-access restriction at the level of individual assets and operations, addressing the granularity gap.

prevents

Establishes the overarching access-control policy whose granularity directly determines whether the weakness exists.

prevents

Defines the assignment and review of access rights; insufficient granularity in those rights is the root of CWE-1220.

prevents

Specifies management of privileged access rights, where overly broad privileges are a common manifestation of the weakness.

none

Limits use of privileged utilities; overly coarse access rules can still allow unauthorized utility access.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Windows Server 2016 (1 rule)
  • V-225025 Local accounts with blank passwords must be restricted to prevent access from the network. prevents CWE-1220
Windows Server 2022 (1 rule)
  • V-254446 Windows Server 2022 must prevent local accounts with blank passwords from being used from the network. prevents CWE-1220

References