VMware Workstation Archives

VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion Security Updates – VMSA-2019-0019

October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory VMSA-2019-0019 (VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion updates address a denial-of-service vulnerability).

This advisory documents the remediation of one issue, rated with a severity of moderate. VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion contain a denial-of-service vulnerability in the shader functionality. Successful exploitation of this issue may allow attackers with normal user privileges to create a denial-of-service condition on their own VMs.

Exploitation of this issue require an attacker to have access to a virtual machine with 3D graphics enabled. By default, this functionality is not enabled on ESXi and is enabled on Workstation and Fusion.

The identifier CVE-2019-5536 was assigned to this vulnerability.

Affected products and resolutions:

ESXi 6.7 – apply patch ESXi670-201908101-SG
ESXi 6.5 – apply patch ESXi650-201910401-SG
Workstation 15.x – update to 15.5.0
Fusion 11.x – update to 11.5.0

The workaround for this issue involves disabling the 3D-acceleration feature.

Disable 3D-acceleration on ESXi

With Host Client or vCenter, go to the individual VM > Edit Settings > Virtual hardware > Video card.
If the “3D Graphics” is checked then 3D-acceleration feature is enabled.

Disable 3D-acceleration on Workstation

Select virtual machine and select VM > Settings.
On the Hardware tab, select Display.
If the “Accelerate 3D graphics” is checked then 3D-acceleration feature is enabled.

Disable 3D-acceleration on Fusion

From the VMware Fusion menu bar, select Window > Virtual Machine Library.
Select a virtual machine and click Settings.
In the Settings Window > select Display.
If the “Accelerate 3D graphics” is checked then 3D-acceleration feature is enabled.

You can check reports on other VMware vulnerabilities in my page dedicated to Security Advisories.

VMware Security Advisory – VMSA-2018-0008 – Workstation and Fusion Vulnerability

March 18, 2018May 10, 2018 Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: VMSA-2018-0008 – Workstation and Fusion updates address a denial-of-service vulnerability.

This advisory documents the remediation of one issue, rated with a severity of Important. VMware Workstation and Fusion contain a denial-of-service vulnerability which can be triggered by opening a large number of VNC sessions. A successfully exploitation of the vulnerability will result in a virtual machine shutdown.

The identifier CVE-2018-6957 was assigned to this vulnerability. The vulnerability was discovered by a Cisco Talos researcher.

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

January 14, 2018January 14, 2018 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).

VMware Patches for Spectre

January 10, 2018May 10, 2018 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)

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2018-0003

January 5, 2018January 8, 2018 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.

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

January 4, 2018May 10, 2018 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.

VMware Security Advisories VMSA-2017-0018.1 and VMSA-2017-0019

November 20, 2017January 8, 2018 Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released information on few vulnerabilities covering Workstation, Player, Fusion, Horizon View Client and NSX: “VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0018.1 – VMware Workstation, Fusion and Horizon View Client updates resolve multiple security vulnerabilities” and “VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0019 – NSX for vSphere update addresses NSX Edge Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) issue”.

Tag: VMware Workstation