CVE-2025-33003: IBM InfoSphere Privilege Escalation Flaw

CVE-2025-33003 Overview

CVE-2025-33003 affects IBM InfoSphere Information Server versions 11.7.0.0 through 11.7.1.6. The vulnerability allows a non-root user to gain elevated privileges within the scope of a container. The flaw stems from execution with unnecessary privileges, categorized as [CWE-250]. A local attacker with existing access to the container can leverage the excessive privileges to expand capabilities beyond their intended scope.

Critical Impact
A local, authenticated user can escalate privileges within an IBM InfoSphere Information Server container, gaining higher capabilities that compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability of hosted data processing workloads.

Affected Products

IBM InfoSphere Information Server 11.7.0.0
IBM InfoSphere Information Server 11.7.1.x through 11.7.1.6
Containerized deployments of IBM InfoSphere Information Server 11.7

Discovery Timeline

2025-10-31 - CVE-2025-33003 published to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD)
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-33003

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in IBM InfoSphere Information Server components that run with more privileges than required for normal operation. When deployed in a container, one or more processes execute with elevated capabilities. A non-root user inside the container can interact with these overprivileged components to obtain higher effective privileges within the container boundary.

The issue is a privilege escalation flaw driven by a design defect rather than a memory safety bug. It requires local access, low privileges, and no user interaction to exploit. Successful exploitation yields high impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected container workload.

Root Cause

The root cause maps to [CWE-250]: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges. Components of InfoSphere Information Server operate with broader Linux capabilities or elevated user context than the workload requires. This violates the principle of least privilege and expands the blast radius when any lower-privileged process is subverted.

In container environments, unnecessary capabilities such as CAP_SETUID, CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE, or CAP_SYS_ADMIN on binaries or on the container itself allow a non-root user to transition to higher privileges. IBM's advisory for this issue is available in the IBM Support Document.

Attack Vector

An attacker needs local, authenticated access to an affected container. This typically requires prior compromise of an application component, a valid low-privileged shell, or misuse of an interactive job runner exposed by the platform. From that foothold, the attacker abuses the overprivileged component to execute code or perform actions at a higher privilege level within the container.

The attack does not cross the container boundary by itself. However, elevated container privileges are commonly a stepping stone to host escape when combined with weak container isolation, mounted sockets, or writable host paths.

No public proof-of-concept exploit is available at this time, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-33003

Indicators of Compromise

Unexpected setuid or setgid invocations by non-root user IDs inside InfoSphere Information Server containers.
New processes running as root or higher-privileged service accounts spawned from user-context shells or job runners.
Modification of files owned by privileged accounts by processes launched under low-privilege UIDs.
Container audit events showing use of capabilities such as CAP_SETUID, CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE, or CAP_SYS_ADMIN by unexpected binaries.

Detection Strategies

Baseline the process tree and effective UIDs of InfoSphere Information Server containers, then alert on deviations.
Enable Linux audit rules (auditd) for execve, setuid, and capability changes within container namespaces.
Correlate container runtime logs with InfoSphere application logs to identify privilege transitions tied to user actions.

Monitoring Recommendations

Ship container stdout, stderr, and audit logs to a centralized platform for retention and analysis.
Monitor Kubernetes admission events for pods running InfoSphere with privileged: true, allowPrivilegeEscalation: true, or added Linux capabilities.
Track file integrity on InfoSphere binaries and configuration paths to catch tampering with setuid attributes.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-33003

Immediate Actions Required

Inventory all InfoSphere Information Server deployments and identify instances running 11.7.0.0 through 11.7.1.6.
Apply the vendor-supplied fix referenced in the IBM Support Document as soon as a maintenance window permits.
Restrict interactive and job-execution access to InfoSphere containers to trusted administrators only.
Rotate credentials and audit recent privileged actions on affected containers.

Patch Information

IBM has published remediation guidance for CVE-2025-33003 in the IBM Support Document. Administrators should apply the referenced fix pack or interim patch that addresses the excessive-privileges configuration in the affected 11.7.x release stream.

Workarounds

Run InfoSphere Information Server containers with allowPrivilegeEscalation: false and drop all non-essential Linux capabilities.
Enforce a non-root runAsUser and a read-only root filesystem where the application supports it.
Apply a restrictive seccomp profile and enable AppArmor or SELinux to constrain container syscalls.
Limit which users can exec into InfoSphere pods via Kubernetes RBAC and audit those actions.

bash

# Example Kubernetes securityContext hardening for InfoSphere pods
securityContext:
  runAsNonRoot: true
  runAsUser: 10001
  allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
  readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
  capabilities:
    drop:
      - ALL
  seccompProfile:
    type: RuntimeDefault