VMware fixed critical VM Escape bug demonstrated at Geekpwn hacking contest

VMware fixed three flaws in multiple products, including a virtual machine escape issue exploited at the GeekPwn 2022 hacking competition.

VMware addressed three vulnerabilities in multiple products, including a virtual machine escape flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-31705, that was exploited at the GeekPwn 2022 hacking competition.

A working exploit for the CVE-2022-31705 vulnerability was demonstrated by Ant Security researcher Yuhao Jiang during the Geekpwn, a hacking contest run by the Tencent Keen Security Lab.

The CVE-2022-31705 vulnerability (CVSSv3 base score of 9.3) is a heap out-of-bounds write issue in the USB 2.0 controller (EHCI).

“VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion contain a heap out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the USB 2.0 controller (EHCI)” reads the advisory published by the virtualization giant. “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.”

The company also addressed a command injection and directory traversal security vulnerabilities, respectively tracked as CVE-2022-31702 and CVE-2022-31703, impacting the VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) solution. Below are the details for the flaws:

VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) command injection vulnerability (CVE-2022-31702) – “vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) contains a command injection vulnerability present in the vRNI REST API.” states the advisory. “A malicious actor with network access to the vRNI REST API can execute commands without authentication.”

VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) contains a directory traversal vulnerability (CVE-2022-31703) – “vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) directory traversal vulnerability in vRNI REST API.” reads the advisory. “A malicious actor with network access to the vRNI REST API can read arbitrary files from the server.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, VMware)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.