9.3 - VMSA-2008-0009

a. VMware Tools Local Privilege Escalation on Windows-based guest OS

The VMware Tools Package provides support required for shared folders (HGFS) and other features.

An input validation error is present in the Windows-based VMware HGFS.sys driver. Exploitation of this flaw might result in arbitrary code execution on the guest system by an unprivileged guest user. It doesn't matter on what host the Windows guest OS is running, as this is a guest driver vulnerability and not a vulnerability on the host.

The HGFS.sys driver is present in the guest operating system if the VMware Tools package is loaded. Even if the host has HGFS disabled and has no shared folders, Windows-based guests may be affected. This is regardless if a host supports HGFS.

This issue could be mitigated by removing the VMware Tools package from Windows based guests. However this is not recommended as it would impact usability of the product.

NOTE: Installing the new hosted release or ESX patches will not remediate the issue. The VMware Tools packages will need to be updated on each Windows-based guest followed by a reboot of the guest system.

VMware would like to thank iDefense and Stephen Fewer of Harmony Security for reporting this issue to us.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2007-5671 to this issue.

b. Privilege escalation on ESX or Linux based hosted operating systems

This update fixes a security issue related to local exploitation of an untrusted library path vulnerability in vmware-authd. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must have local access and the ability to execute the set-uid vmware-authd binary on an affected system. Exploitation of this flaw might result in arbitrary code execution on the Linux host system by an unprivileged user.

VMware would like to thank iDefense for reporting this issue to us.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0967 to this issue.

c. Openwsman Invalid Content-Length Vulnerability

Openwsman is a system management platform that implements the Web Services Management protocol (WS-Management). It is installed and running by default. It is used in the VMware Management Service Console and in ESXi.

The openwsman management service on ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 is vulnerable to a privilege escalation vulnerability, which may allow users with non-privileged ESX or Virtual Center accounts to gain root privileges.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need a local ESX account or a VirtualCenter account with the Host.Cim.CimInteraction permission.

Systems with no local ESX accounts and no VirtualCenter accounts with the Host.Cim.CimInteraction permission are not vulnerable.

This vulnerability cannot be exploited by users without valid login credentials.

Discovery: Alexander Sotirov, VMware Security Research

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-2097 to this issue.

d. VMware VIX Application Programming Interface (API) Memory Overflow Vulnerabilities

The VIX API (also known as "Vix") is an API that lets users write scripts and programs to manipulate virtual machines.

Multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities are present in the VIX API. Exploitation of these vulnerabilities might result in code execution on the host system or on the service console in ESX Server from the guest operating system.

The VIX API can be enabled and disabled using the "vix.inGuest.enable" setting in the VMware configuration file. This default value for this setting is "disabled". This configuration setting is present in the following products: VMware Workstation 6.0.2 and higher VMware ACE 6.0.2 and higher VMware Server 1.06 and higher VMware Fusion 1.1.2 and higher ESX Server 3.0 and higher ESX Server 3.5 and higher In previous versions of VMware products where the VIX API was introduced, the VIX API couldn't be disabled.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-2100 to this issue.

a. Security update for cyrus-sasl

Updated cyrus-sasl package for the ESX Service Console corrects a security issue found in the DIGEST-MD5 authentication mechanism of Cyrus' implementation of Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL). As a result of this issue in the authentication mechanism, a remote unauthenticated attacker might be able to cause a denial of service error on the service console.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2006-1721 to this issue.

RPMs Updated: cyrus-sasl-2.1.15-15.i386.rpm cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.15-1.i386.rpm

b. Security update for tcltk

An input validation flaw was discovered in Tk's GIF image handling. A code-size value read from a GIF image was not properly validated before being used, leading to a buffer overflow. A specially crafted GIF file could use this to cause a crash or, potentially, execute code with the privileges of the application using the Tk graphical toolkit.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0553 to this issue.

A buffer overflow flaw was discovered in Tk's animated GIF image handling. An animated GIF containing an initial image smaller than subsequent images could cause a crash or, potentially, execute code with the privileges of the application using the Tk library.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2007-5378 to this issue.

A flaw first discovered in the Tcl regular expression engine used in the PostgreSQL database server, resulted in an infinite loop when processing certain regular expressions.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2007-4772 to this issue.

RPM Updated: tcl-8.3.5-92.8.i386.rpm

c. Security update for unzip

This patch includes a moderate security update to the service console that fixes a flaw in unzip. An attacker could execute malicious code with a user's privileges if the user ran unzip on a file designed to leverage this flaw.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0888 to this issue.

RPM Updated: Unzip-5.50-36.EL3.i386.rpm

d. Security update for krb5

KDC in MIT Kerberos 5 (krb5kdc) does not set a global variable for some krb4 message types, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via crafted messages that trigger a NULL pointer dereference or double-free.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0062 to this issue.

NOTE: ESX doesn't contain the krb5kdc binary and is not vulnerable to this issue.

The Kerberos 4 support in KDC in MIT Kerberos 5 (krb5kdc) does not properly clear the unused portion of a buffer when generating an error message, which might allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive information, aka "Uninitialized stack values."

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0063 to this issue.

NOTE: ESX doesn't contain the krb5kdc binary and is not vulnerable to this issue.

Buffer overflow in the RPC library (lib/rpc/rpc_dtablesize.c) used by libgssrpc and kadmind in MIT Kerberos 5 (krb5) 1.2.2, and probably other versions before 1.3, when running on systems whose unistd.h does not define the FD_SETSIZE macro, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code by triggering a large number of open file descriptors.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-0948 to this issue.

RPM Updated: krb5-libs-1.2.7-68.i386.rpm