Administrative access via hard-coded recovery credentials
Published Mar 20, 2025 · Updated Feb 26, 2026
Hard-coded credentials in Esri Portal for ArcGIS 11.4 and earlier allow remote attackers to gain administrative access through password recovery. In the affected deployment pattern, the password-recovery path accepts a credential embedded in the product rather than deployment-specific secret material. No authentication or user interaction is required; successful recovery grants portal administration, while other deployment patterns are outside the published claim.
Summary
What happened
Hard-coded credentials in Esri Portal for ArcGIS 11.4 and earlier allow remote attackers to gain administrative access through password recovery. In the affected deployment pattern, the password-recovery path accepts a credential embedded in the product rather than deployment-specific secret material. No authentication or user interaction is required; successful recovery grants portal administration, while other deployment patterns are outside the published claim.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-2538
- Published
- Mar 20, 2025
- Updated
- Feb 26, 2026
- Vendor
- Esri
- Product
- Portal for ArcGIS
- Classifications
- CWE-798, CAPEC-50, T1098
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Mar 20, 2025CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Feb 26, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=All <=11.4
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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