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Potential CVE-2025-41244 vmtoolsd LPE Exploitation Attempt

This rule looks for processes that behave like an attacker trying to exploit a known vulnerability in VMware tools (CVE-2025-41244). The vulnerable behavior involves the VMware tools service or its discovery scripts…

Description

This rule looks for processes that behave like an attacker trying to exploit a known vulnerability in VMware tools (CVE-2025-41244). The vulnerable behavior involves the VMware tools service or its discovery scripts executing other programs to probe their version strings. An attacker can place a malicious program in a writable location (for example /tmp) and have the tools execute it with elevated privileges, resulting in local privilege escalation. The rule flags launches where vmtoolsd or the service discovery scripts start other child processes.

Detection logic

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Detection requirements

Platform
ContainersLinuxmacOSWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the 2 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Log source category
event_index

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