CVE-2025-27725 in ACAT
Summary
by MITRE • 11/11/2025
Time-of-check time-of-use race condition for some ACAT before version 3.13 within Ring 3: User Applications may allow a denial of service. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a high complexity attack may enable denial of service. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are not present without special internal knowledge and requires active user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (high) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (none) impacts.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/11/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-27725 represents a time-of-check time-of-use race condition affecting ACAT software versions prior to 3.13 operating within Ring 3 user applications. This type of race condition occurs when the system's security checks and actual resource usage are separated by a temporal window where malicious actors can exploit the inconsistency between these two phases. The vulnerability specifically impacts the integrity and availability aspects of affected systems while maintaining confidentiality at baseline levels.
This race condition vulnerability stems from improper synchronization mechanisms within the ACAT application's resource management protocols. The flaw manifests when user applications perform checks on system resources or permissions and subsequently use those resources without proper validation, creating an opportunity for adversaries to manipulate the system state between the check and use phases. According to CWE-362, this represents a classic concurrency vulnerability where two threads or processes access shared resources without proper mutual exclusion mechanisms. The attack requires an authenticated user context combined with high complexity attack vectors, indicating that adversaries must have legitimate system access and demonstrate significant technical expertise to exploit this weakness effectively.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple denial of service conditions, as it can potentially lead to system instability and resource exhaustion. The high availability impact suggests that successful exploitation could result in complete system service interruption or complete system crash, depending on how the race condition manifests within the application's memory management or process handling mechanisms. The requirement for local access and active user interaction indicates that this vulnerability cannot be exploited remotely, but rather requires physical or network access to the target system with valid user credentials. This constraint reduces the attack surface but does not eliminate the risk entirely, particularly in environments where privileged accounts are compromised or where social engineering attacks successfully obtain user authentication credentials.
Mitigation strategies should focus on implementing proper synchronization primitives and ensuring atomic operations between check and use phases within the ACAT application. System administrators should immediately upgrade to ACAT version 3.13 or later to address this vulnerability. Additionally, implementing proper access controls and monitoring for unusual resource access patterns can help detect potential exploitation attempts. The vulnerability's classification under ATT&CK technique T1499.004 indicates that adversaries may leverage this weakness as part of broader denial of service campaigns, making proactive remediation essential. Organizations should also consider implementing application whitelisting policies and monitoring user application behavior to prevent exploitation of this race condition vulnerability. The lack of confidentiality and integrity impacts suggests that the primary concern remains system availability, though the potential for privilege escalation or data corruption cannot be entirely ruled out without additional analysis of the specific implementation details.