Critical ServiceNow Vulnerability Enables Privilege Escalation Via Unauthenticated User Impersonation

A critical security threat to ServiceNow AI Platform deployments, allowing unauthenticated attackers to impersonate legitimate users and execute unauthorized operations.

The vulnerability, CVE-2025-12420, was discovered by AppOmni, a SaaS security firm, and disclosed to ServiceNow in October 2025, prompting immediate remediation efforts.

The privilege escalation flaw within ServiceNow’s AI Platform infrastructure enables attackers without authentication credentials to assume the identity of authorized users.

Upon successful impersonation, threat actors gain access to all operations and permissions associated with the compromised user account.

CVE ID	Vulnerability Type	CVSS Score (v4.0)	Affected Component
CVE-2025-12420	Privilege Escalation	9.3	ServiceNow AI Platform

Potentially leading to unauthorized data access, configuration changes, and lateral movement within enterprise environments.

ServiceNow addressed the vulnerability on October 30, 2025, deploying security patches to the majority of hosted instances.

The company simultaneously provided updates to partners and self-hosted customer deployments.

The vulnerability is also resolved in specific Store App versions released as part of the October 2025 security maintenance cycle.

Affected Applications and Patched Versions

The vulnerability impacts two critical ServiceNow applications:

Component	Required Version (Minimum)
Assist AI Agents (sn_aia)	5.1.18 or later, OR 5.2.19 or later
Virtual Agent API (sn_va_as_service)	3.15.2 or later, OR 4.0.4 or later

ServiceNow strongly recommends that customers immediately apply the appropriate security updates or upgrade to patched versions if deployment has not already occurred.

Organizations operating both hosted and self-hosted ServiceNow environments should prioritize remediation of this vulnerability due to its critical nature and the potential for increased exploitation following public disclosure.

Currently, ServiceNow reports no evidence of active exploitation in the wild. However, the window between public disclosure and widespread attack implementation is typically narrow, necessitating urgent action from security teams.

This collaborative approach enabled vendors to develop and deploy fixes before public announcement, reducing the exposure window for customer environments.

Organizations relying on ServiceNow AI Platform components should review the complete security advisory.

Implementation guidelines are available through the official support documentation to ensure comprehensive vulnerability remediation across their infrastructure.

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