Summary
Impact: Remote Code Execution. Microsoft rating: Important. Not known to be exploited — Exploitation Less Likely. Customer action: Required.
Details
According to the CVSS metric, the attack vector is adjacent (AV:A) and privileges required are low (PR:L). What does that mean for this vulnerability?
Multiple networking topologies are available to connect High Performance Compute (HPC) resources which are reliant upon intra-nets or private networks and do not expose HPC resources to the public internet regardless of implementation. An attacker must have access to the network connecting the targeted clusters and nodes (PR:L) and must send a specially crafted HTTPS request to the head node (AV:A) to successfully exploit this vulnerability.
For more information on how HPC resources can be connected, please reference this documentation regarding Understanding HPC Cluster Network Topologies.
According to the CVSS metric, the scope is changed (S:C). What does that mean for this vulnerability?
An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted HTTPS request to the targeted head node or Linux compute node granting them the ability to perform RCE on other clusters or nodes connected to the targeted head node.
Security updates
6.3.8328.0 — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/high-performance-computing/release-notes-for-hpc-pack-2019-update-3?view=hpc19-ps
2016.3 — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/high-performance-computing/release-notes-for-hpc-pack-2016-update-3?view=hpc16-ps
Vulnerabilities 1
-
Critical 9.0
Microsoft High Performance Compute (HPC) Pack Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Microsoft High Performance Compute (HPC) Pack Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Revision history
-
#1
Information published.
References
-
CVE-2025-21198 Microsoft High Performance Compute (HPC) Pack Remote Code Execution Vulnerability - HTML
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21198
-
Microsoft Exploitability Index
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/exploitability-index?rtc=1
-
Microsoft Support Lifecycle
https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
-
Common Vulnerability Scoring System
https://www.first.org/cvss