Critical Unpatched VMware Flaw Affects Multiple Corporates Products

Nov 24, 2020

VMware has released temporary workarounds to address a critical
vulnerability in its products that could be exploited by an
attacker to take control of an affected system.

“A malicious actor with network access to the administrative
configurator on port 8443 and a valid password for the configurator
admin account can execute commands with unrestricted privileges on
the underlying operating system,” the virtualization software and
services firm noted in its advisory ^[1].

Tracked as CVE-2020-4006, the command injection ^[2]
vulnerability has a CVSS score of 9.1 out of 10 and impacts VMware
Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager, and
Identity Manager Connector.

While the company said patches for the flaw are “forthcoming,”
it didn’t specify an exact date by when it’s expected to be
released. It’s unclear if the vulnerability is under active
attack.

The complete list of products affected are as follows:

VMware Workspace One Access (versions 20.01 and 20.10 for Linux
and Windows)
VMware Workspace One Access Connector (versions 20.10,
20.01.0.0, and 20.01.0.1 for Windows)
VMware Identity Manager (versions 3.3.1, 3.3.2, and 3.3.3 for
Linux and Windows)
VMware Identity Manager Connector (versions 3.3.1, 3.3.2 for
Linux and 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3 for Windows)
VMware Cloud Foundation (versions 4.x for Linux and
Windows)
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (versions 8.x for Linux and
Windows)

VMware said the workaround applies only to the administrative
configurator service hosted on port 8443.

“Configurator-managed setting changes will not be possible while
the workaround is in place,” the company said ^[3]. “If changes are
required please revert the workaround following the instructions
below, make the required changes and disable again until patches
are available.”

The advisory comes days after VMware addressed a critical flaw in ESXi, Workstation, and
Fusion hypervisors ^[4]
that could be exploited by a malicious actor with local
administrative privileges on a virtual machine to execute code and
escalate their privileges on the affected system (CVE-2020-4004 and
CVE-2020-4005).

The vulnerability was discovered by Qihoo 360 Vulcan Team at the
2020 Tianfu Cup Pwn Contest ^[5] held earlier this month
in China.

References

^{^}
advisory
(www.vmware.com)
^{^}
command
injection (capec.mitre.org)
^{^}
said
(kb.vmware.com)
^{^}
critical
flaw in ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion hypervisors
(www.vmware.com)
^{^}
2020
Tianfu Cup Pwn Contest (thehackernews.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Critical Unpatched VMware Flaw Affects Multiple Corporates Products

References

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