Security News > 2023 > February > Massive ESXiArgs ransomware attack targets VMware ESXi servers worldwide
Admins, hosting providers, and the French Computer Emergency Response Team warn that attackers actively target VMware ESXi servers unpatched against a two-year-old remote code execution vulnerability to deploy ransomware.
"As current investigations, these attack campaigns appear to be exploiting the vulnerability CVE-2021-21974, for which a patch has been available since 23 February 2021," CERT-FR said.
To block incoming attacks, admins have to disable the vulnerable Service Location Protocol service on ESXi hypervisors that haven't yet been updated.
French cloud provider OVHcloud has also published a report today linking this massive wave of attacks targeting VMware ESXi servers with the Nevada ransomware operation.
"The attack is primarily targetting ESXi servers in version before 7.0 U3i, apparently through the OpenSLP port."
From the ransom notes seen in this attack, they do not appear to be related to the Nevada Ransomware, and appears to be a new ransomware family.
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Related Vulnerability
| DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-02-24 | CVE-2021-21974 | Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in VMWare Cloud Foundation and Esxi OpenSLP as used in ESXi (7.0 before ESXi70U1c-17325551, 6.7 before ESXi670-202102401-SG, 6.5 before ESXi650-202102101-SG) has a heap-overflow vulnerability. | 8.8 |