Security News > 2022 > October > Exploit released for critical VMware RCE vulnerability, patch now
Proof-of-concept exploit code is now available for a pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code remotely with root privileges on unpatched Cloud Foundation and NSX Manager appliances.
The flaw is in the XStream open-source library used by the two VMware products and was assigned an almost maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.8/10 by VMware.
VMware released security updates to address the CVE-2021-39144 flaw reported by Sina Kheirkhah of MDSec and Steven Seeley of Source Incite on Tuesday.
VMware has also shared a temporary solution for admins who cannot immediately deploy security updates to patch their appliances.
In August, VMware warned customers of another public PoC exploit targeting a critical authentication bypass security flaw in multiple VMware products, allowing attackers to gain admin privileges on unpatched appliances.
VMware also informed customers who updated to vCenter Server 8.0 this month that they'll have to wait for a patch to address a privilege escalation vulnerability the company disclosed almost a year ago, in November 2021.
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Related Vulnerability
| DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-08-23 | CVE-2021-39144 | Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in multiple products XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. | 8.5 |