vmware tools CVE-2023-20867 vulnerability in VMware and Other Products
Published on June 13, 2023

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A fully compromised ESXi host can force VMware Tools to fail to authenticate host-to-guest operations, impacting the confidentiality and integrity of the guest virtual machine.

Vendor Advisory Vendor Advisory NVD

Known Exploited Vulnerability

This VMware Tools Authentication Bypass Vulnerability is part of CISA's list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. VMware Tools contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the vgauth module. A fully compromised ESXi host can force VMware Tools to fail to authenticate host-to-guest operations, impacting the confidentiality and integrity of the guest virtual machine. An attacker must have root access over ESXi to exploit this vulnerability.

The following remediation steps are recommended / required by July 14, 2023: Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2023-20867 can be exploited with local system access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is consided to have a high level of attack complexity. It has an exploitability score of 0.8 out of four. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a small impact on confidentiality and integrity, and no impact on availability.


Products Associated with CVE-2023-20867

You can be notified by stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2023-20867 are published in these products:

VMware Tools
 
Canonical Ubuntu Linux
 
Debian Linux
 
Fedora Project Fedora
 

What versions are vulnerable to CVE-2023-20867?