VMWare has shipped updates to Workstation, Fusion, and ESXi products to address an “important” security vulnerability that could be weaponized by a threat actor to take control of affected systems.
The issue relates to a heap-overflow vulnerability — tracked as CVE-2021-22045 (CVSS score: 7.7) — that, if successfully exploited, results in the execution of arbitrary code. The company credited Jaanus Kääp, a security researcher with Clarified Security, for reporting the flaw.
“A malicious actor with access to a virtual machine with CD-ROM device emulation may be able to exploit this vulnerability in conjunction with other issues to execute code on the hypervisor from a virtual machine,” VMware said in an advisory published on January 4. “Successful exploitation requires [a] CD image to be attached to the virtual machine.” Read more: https://bit.ly/3zChclr