Maximum Severity HPE OneView Flaw Exploited in the Wild
Summary
A maximum-severity remote code execution vulnerability, CVE-2025-37164, affects Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s OneView management platform and has been added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalogue. The flaw carries a CVSS score of 10. HPE disclosed the issue on 17 December and released a hotfix covering OneView versions 5.20 through 10.20. Because OneView sits at the privileged control plane and provides administrator-level control over servers, storage, networking and firmware, successful exploitation could give attackers centralised control over an organisation’s infrastructure.
At present the picture on actual exploitation is murky: HPE says it has not received customer reports of active exploitation and Rapid7 has not observed exploitation, yet CISA has listed the flaw in KEV, prompting urgent patching advice and heightened concern from security teams.
Key Points
- CVE-2025-37164 is an unauthenticated remote code execution bug in HPE OneView with a CVSS score of 10.
- HPE released a hotfix on 17 December for OneView versions 5.20 through 10.20 — apply it immediately.
- The vulnerability was added to CISA’s KEV catalogue, signalling elevated risk even if public exploitation details remain unclear.
- OneView is a privileged management platform; successful RCE could allow attackers centralised, catastrophic control over infrastructure.
- Security vendors (eg Rapid7) urge treating this as an assumed-breach scenario: prioritise patching, review segmentation and access controls, and increase monitoring of management systems.
- Organisations should check for patch deployment, audit access paths to OneView, rotate credentials where appropriate, and monitor logs for suspicious activity.
Context and Relevance
This vulnerability matters because management platforms like OneView are trusted by design and often run with broad privileges but receive less monitoring than internet-facing systems. In 2025 and beyond, attacks that compromise management layers produce disproportionately large blast radii: an attacker with control of OneView could manipulate firmware, servers and network devices at scale.
Adding the flaw to CISA’s KEV catalogue raises the urgency for defenders and compliance teams: KEV listings are used by many organisations to prioritise emergency patching and incident response. Even without confirmed wide-scale exploitation, the potential impact and ease (unauthenticated RCE) justify immediate remediation and a review of network segmentation and monitoring around management systems.
Why should I read this?
Short version: if you run HPE OneView, this is one of those “do it now” patches. We’ve read the tech-speak so you don’t have to — patch, lock down access, and check your logs. If you ignore it, someone else might not.
Author style
Punchy: This isn’t a garden-variety bug — OneView controls the guts of your datacentre. Treat the advisory as urgent and act fast; the consequences of delay could be severe.
Recommended Immediate Actions
- Apply HPE’s hotfix for OneView (versions 5.20–10.20) without delay.
- Restrict access to OneView interfaces to management networks and authorised hosts only.
- Review segmentation and access paths; assume a breach until proven otherwise.
- Rotate administrator credentials and keys associated with management accounts where practical.
- Increase logging and alerting on OneView activity and inspect historical logs for anomalies.