Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine escape bug exploited at the GeekPwn 2022 hacking challenge.
The VM escape flaw, documented as CVE-2022-31705, was exploited by Ant Security researcher Yuhao Jiang on systems running fully patched VMware Fusion, ESXi and Workstation products.
The exploit took the top prize at Geekpwn, a hacking contest run by China-based Tencent Keen Security Lab.
In a security bulletin issued Tuesday, VMWare slapped a CVSS severity rating of 9.3/10 and warned that a malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine may exploit this issue to execute code as the virtual machine’s VMX process running on the host
“On ESXi, the exploitation is contained within the VMX sandbox whereas, on Workstation and Fusion, this may lead to code execution on the machine where Workstation or Fusion is installed,” VMware added.
[ Read: VMware Confirms Workspace One Exploits in the Wild ]
VMware documented the bug as a heap out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the USB 2.0 controller (EHCI).
The company also released fixes cover a pair of command injection and directory traversal bugs affecting the VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) product.
“[The] vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) contains a command injection vulnerability present in the vRNI REST API. VMware has evaluated the severity of this issue to be in the critical severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.8,” the company said in a critical-severity advisory.
“A malicious actor with network access to the vRNI REST API can execute commands without authentication,” VMware added.
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Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series.
Ryan is a veteran cybersecurity strategist who has built security engagement programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. He is a co-founder of Threatpost and the global SAS conference series. Ryan’s past career as a security journalist included bylines at major technology publications including Ziff Davis eWEEK, CBS Interactive’s ZDNet, PCMag and PC World.
Ryan is a director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.
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