Introduction
Remote attackers with limited admin privileges gaining the ability to reconfigure authentication settings on your VPN or Zero Trust gateway is a scenario no enterprise wants to face. CVE-2025-55141 highlights a critical authorization flaw in Ivanti's core secure access products, with real potential for privilege escalation and security policy bypass in production environments.
Ivanti is a major player in enterprise IT and network security, with products like Connect Secure and Policy Secure widely used for VPN and network access control. Their solutions are deployed by thousands of organizations globally, making any systemic flaw in their access control mechanisms highly impactful.
Technical Information
CVE-2025-55141 is a missing authorization vulnerability (CWE-862) affecting several Ivanti secure access products. The flaw exists in the web-based administrative interface, where remote authenticated users with read-only admin privileges are able to access and modify authentication-related settings. This is a privilege escalation scenario: the system fails to enforce proper authorization checks on sensitive configuration endpoints. As a result, users who should only be able to view settings can alter authentication mechanisms, potentially weakening security or establishing backdoor access. The root cause is insufficient validation of user permissions when processing configuration changes. No public code snippets are available for this issue.
Affected Systems and Versions
- Ivanti Connect Secure: all versions before 22.7R2.9 or 22.8R2
- Ivanti Policy Secure: all versions before 22.7R1.6
- Ivanti ZTA Gateway: all versions before 2.8R2.3-723
- Ivanti Neurons for Secure Access: all versions before 22.8R1.4
These products are vulnerable in default configurations if the above version criteria are met.
Vendor Security History
Ivanti has a documented history of critical vulnerabilities in its secure access products. Notable recent issues include CVE-2025-22457 (initially mischaracterized as low risk, later found to be critical), authentication bypasses, and privilege escalation flaws. Ivanti products have been frequent targets for advanced threat actors, including China-nexus groups such as UNC5221. While patch response times have improved, the recurring pattern of high-impact vulnerabilities raises concerns about the maturity of Ivanti's secure development lifecycle and codebase consistency across product lines.