Category: VMware

vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.33

New Release – vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.33

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

What a release schedule! The team behind vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling is doing a beautiful job here, one release every other week. I previously blogged about v3.32 of the plugin and the vApp goodies it brought. Here we are in front of a new release, v3.33, with another great set of vApp and VM improvements.

If you don’t use yet the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling, you can find here the installation details.

The update process is as easy as described in the How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling article. You just hit “Update vSphere Client” button in the management console and the update starts right away:

vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling - Update
vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling – Update

After the process is completed and you re-login to the web client, you will see the new version confirmation:

vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling - Version v3.33
vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling – Version v3.33

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VMware Carpool Tech Talk - Joe Baguley

VMware Carpool Tech Talk

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

In a fashion similar with James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, VMware EMEA released over the last six months a series of short videos: VMware Carpool Tech Talk. For each episode of the series, two VMware influencers share a car and have a short tech talk. It’s a different format, relaxed, fun to follow, and without the exposure it deserves. Without further due, here we go!

VMware Carpool Tech Talk – Rory Choudhuri and Andrew Hald – Hands-on Labs

Rory Choudhuri (Solutions Marketing Director at VMware) talks with Andrew Hald (Principal Architect and Senior Manager) about how VMware Hand-on Labs add value to the products and the customers. How they deliver 150,000 VMs a week, what’s next and what’s in it for you?

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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory – VMSA-2018-0005 – Workstation and Fusion Updates

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: VMSA-2018-0005 – VMware Workstation, and Fusion updates resolve use-after-free and integer-overflow vulnerabilities.

This advisory documents the remediation of two issues: one critical (use-after-free vulnerability in VMware NAT service when IPv6 mode is enabled) and one important (an integer overflow vulnerability in VMware NAT service when IPv6 mode is enabled).

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VMware Patches for Spectre

VMware Patches for Spectre

Constantin Ghioc 1 Comment

After releasing the initial security advisory VMSA-2018-0002 to discuss Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, VMware released yesterday the second advisory on the matter – VMSA-2018-0004 – VMware vSphere, Workstation and Fusion updates add Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Remediation for speculative execution issue.

VMSA-2018-0004 – Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Remediation

Updates of vCenter Server, ESXi, Workstation and Fusion virtualize the new speculative-execution control mechanism for virtual machines. As a result, a patched guest operating system can remediate the Branch Target Injection issue (CVE identifier CVE-2017-5715). This issue may allow for information disclosure between processes within the VM.

Affected VMware products:

  • vCenter Server 5.5, 6.0, 6.5
  • ESXi 5.5, 6.0, 6.5
  • Workstation 12.x (patch planned; update to 12.5.9), 14.x (update to 14.1.1)
  • Fusion 8.x (update to 8.5.10), 10.x (update to 10.1.1)

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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory – VMSA-2018-0001 – vSphere Data Protection

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

I know you are all busy patching Meltdown and Spectre, but let’s not forget about a security advisory that VMware released so early this year, on 2nd January 2018: VMSA-2018-0001 – vSphere Data Protection (VDP) updates address multiple security issues.

This advisory documents the remediation of three important issues: a VDP authentication bypass vulnerability, VDP arbitrary file upload vulnerability, and a VDP path traversal vulnerability.

Same day, VMware released a new vSphere Data Protection version, 6.1.6, which among other goodies fixes all the vulnerabilities from the current advisory.

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32

New Release – vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

You may already know I’m a big fan of vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling, so you should be not surprised that I follow closely the development of this fling. Last few days like everybody else in the tech world I was busy with Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, but I still managed to notice that the development team released a new version: vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32.

If you still don’t use the fling (why wouldn’t you?), see the article How to Install vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling. If you just need to update it, see How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling.

Update 22 January 2018: Development Team does a great job on updating the fling, so here it is the new v3.33 version of vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling.

So, let’s see, what’s new in vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling?

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VMSA-2018-0003

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2018-0003

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: VMSA-2018-0003 – vRealize Operations for Horizon, vRealize Operations for Published Applications, Workstation, Horizon View Client and Tools updates resolve multiple security vulnerabilities.

This advisory documents the remediation of three important issues: a privilege escalation vulnerability that affects vRealize Operations for Horizon (V4H) and vRealize Operations for Published Applications (V4PA) agents, an out-of-bounds read issue that occurs via Cortado ThinPrint and affects Workstation and Horizon View Client, and a guest access control vulnerability which affects Workstation and Fusion.

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VMSA-2018-0002 Meltdown and Specter

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2018-0002 – Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities

Constantin Ghioc 11 Comments

Google Project Zero released yesterday information about two vulnerabilities with impact to major processors vendors: Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754 – rogue data cache load) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 – bounds check bypass & CVE-2017-5715 – branch target injection). Among other organizations, VMware released a security advisory: VMSA-2018-0002 – VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion updates address side-channel analysis due to speculative execution.

How to patch your vCenter / ESXi infrastructure against speculative execution vulnerabilities (Meltdown and Spectre). Products, versions, patches, order of upgrade, dependencies, warnings. VMware Patches for Spectre

Meltdown and Spectre Overview

Meltdown breaks the isolation between user applications and the operating system, and allows an application to access all system memory (this includes kernel allocated memory). Meltdown affects a range of  Intel processors.

Spectre breaks the memory isolation between different applications, and allows an application to force another application to access arbitrary portions of its memory. Spectre affects a wide range of processors: Intel, AMD, and ARM.

“Both of these vulnerabilities are hardware level vulnerabilities that exist because of a flaw in CPU architecture. They are very serious vulnerabilities because they are operating system and software independent. The long term fix for both of these issues will require that CPU makers change the way their chips work, which means redesigning and releasing new chips.” – Defiant

You can find more information on both vulnerabilities on spectreattack.com. For comprehensive technical details, you can refer to these academic papers: Meltdown and Spectre.

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2017 Review

2017 – A Year in Review

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

It’s first end of year since I started this blog, so I guess it’s review time 🙂 . I will cover 2017 review in three different areas: I will first check what 2017 meant for this blog, then I will write something on my VMUG activities, and in the end I will go over social media.

2017 Review – CloudHat.eu

I started CloudHat.eu at the beginning of August 2017. Since then, I published 39 articles which attracted close to 5,000 unique visitors.

Most viewed article: Latest vCenter and Latest Chrome = No Love

The articles I had most fun writing: How to Install vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling and How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling

Most visitors received from: blogs.vmware.com

Country with biggest number of visitors: United States of America

Most clicked referral keywords in search engines: vmware vcenter converter standalone 6.2

Most clicked outgoing URL: KB2151945 – Shockwave Flash crashes with vSphere Web Client 6.x

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How to Update vCenter Server Appliance to 6.5 Update 1d

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware recently released vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d (Build 7312210). You can read more details about this release in my previous article: “New Release – VMware vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d”. In another article, I showed how to update vCenter Server Appliance using VAMI (vCenter Server Management Interface). The article covers the update to version 6.5 Update 1b, but there is no change in procedure to go to the latest Update 1d.

In this article I will show a different way to update vCenter Server Appliance. I will update vCSA using the appliance shell. This process is as simple as updating through VAMI, but instead of clicking through the user interface, I will execute few commands in remote console.

Note: If you look for VCSA installation instructions, check this article: How to Install VCSA 6.5 (VMware vCenter Server Appliance).

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