Virtualization giant VMware on Thursday announced patches for a vCenter Server vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution.

A centralized management utility, the vCenter Server is used for controlling virtual machines and ESXi hosts, along with their dependent components.

Tracked as CVE-2022-31680 (CVSS score of 7.2), the security bug is described as an unsafe deserialization vulnerability in the platform services controller (PSC).

“A malicious actor with admin access on vCenter server may exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code on the underlying operating system that hosts the vCenter Server,” the company explains in an advisory.

Reported by Cisco Talos security researcher Marcin Noga, the vulnerability was addressed with the release of VMware vCenter Server 6.5 U3u.

This week, VMware also released a patch for a low-severity denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability in the VMware ESXi bare metal hypervisor.

Tracked as CVE-2022-31681, the issue is described as a null-pointer dereference flaw that could allow “a malicious actor with privileges within the VMX process only” to create a DoS condition on the host.

Reported by VictorV (Tangtianwen) of Cyber Kunlun Lab, the bug was addressed with ESXi versions ESXi70U3sf-20036586, ESXi670-202210101-SG, and ESXi650-202210101-SG. Cloud Foundation (ESXi) is also impacted by this vulnerability, VMware says.

VMware recommends that all customers update to a patched version of the impacted software. The company makes no mention of any of these vulnerabilities being exploited in attacks.

By Ionut Arghire on Fri, 07 Oct 2022 14:11:31 +0000
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