Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

VMware Patches Workstation Flaw Disclosed at Hacking Contest

VMware Fixes Vulnerability That Earned Researcher $100,000 at Hacking Contest

VMware has patched a critical Workstation and Fusion vulnerability disclosed recently by a researcher at a hacking competition in China.

VMware Fixes Vulnerability That Earned Researcher $100,000 at Hacking Contest

VMware has patched a critical Workstation and Fusion vulnerability disclosed recently by a researcher at a hacking competition in China.

The security hole, tracked as CVE-2018-6983, was demonstrated last week by Tianwen Tang of Qihoo 360’s Vulcan Team at the Tianfu Cup PWN competition. The white hat hacker earned $100,000 for his work.

It’s worth noting that participants received over $1 million for 30 vulnerabilities disclosed at the Tianfu Cup event, including $120,000 for two Oracle VirtualBox exploit chains.

The flaw affecting VMware Workstation and Fusion has been described as an integer overflow bug affecting virtual network devices. Exploiting this weakness can allow a guest to execute arbitrary code on the host.

The vulnerability affects Workstation 14.x and 15.x on any platform, and Fusion 10.x and 11.x on macOS. Patches have been released for each of the impacted versions on November 22, less than a week after disclosure.

VMware informed customers before the start of the hacking competition that it had sent representatives to the event to review any vulnerabilities that may be demonstrated.

This is not the first vulnerability patched by VMware this month after it was disclosed at a hacking competition in China. On November 9, the company notified customers of fixes for a critical virtual machine (VM) escape vulnerability presented by a researcher in late October at the GeekPwn2018 competition.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Related: Patches Released for Flaws Affecting Dell EMC, VMware Products

Related:VMware Patches Code Execution Flaw in Virtual Graphics Card

Related:VMware Patches Code Execution Flaw in AirWatch Agent

Related:VMware Patches VM Escape Flaw Disclosed at Chinese Hacking Contest

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.