Three Steps to the Terminal: A Siemens ROX II Zero-Day Trilogy


Palo Alto Unit 42 conducted this research in close partnership with Siemens, reflecting their shared commitment to advancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure.

This report details a critical, chained exploit comprising three zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-40948, CVE-2025-40947, and CVE-2025-40949) discovered in Siemens ROX II operational technology (OT) switches. Successful exploitation of this chain would allow an attacker to achieve full privilege escalation and persistent root-level access on these devices, which are critical components of industrial control networks. The vulnerabilities range from Medium to Critical severity, with CVSS 3.1 scores of 6.8 (CVE-2025-40948), 7.5 (CVE-2025-40947), and 9.1 (CVE-2025-40949).

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Source:  Palo Alto Unit 42


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