VMware has released updates for several of its products to address an information disclosure issue caused by a vulnerability in Apache Flex BlazeDS.
According to VMware, an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability in Flex BlazeDS, a component used by several of the company’s products, can be exploited by a remote attacker to cause a server to disclose information by sending it a specially crafted XML request.
The flaw affects VMware vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5, vCloud Director 5.5 and 5.6, and Horizon View 5.0 and 6.0. The issue has been resolved with the release of VMware vCenter Server 5.0u3e, 5.1u3b and 5.5u3, vCloud Director 5.5.3 and 5.6.4, and Horizon View 5.3.4 and 6.1. vCenter Server 6.0 is not affected.
The Apache Flex BlazeDS vulnerability (CVE-2015-3269), which exists in the BlazeDS Remoting/AMF protocol implementation, was discovered in August by Matthias Kaiser of Code White, who published a blog post detailing the issue and ways to exploit it.
“When receiving XML encoded AMF messages containing DTD entities, the default XML parser configurations allows expanding of entities to local resources. A request that included a specially crafted request parameter could be used to access content that would otherwise be protected,” the Apache Software Foundation wrote in an advisory.
Apache patched the security hole with the release of Flex BlazeDS 4.7.1. All prior versions are affected.
Flex BlazeDS is an open-source server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology originally developed by Adobe. The project was donated to the Apache Software Foundation a few years ago, but Adobe continues to use it in its products.
In August, Adobe released hotfixes for both ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services (DS) to address this particular vulnerability. Earlier this week, Adobe released another update for LiveCycle DS and ColdFusion to address a different BlazeDS issue, namely a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability reported by James Kettle of PortSwigger Web Security (CVE-2015-5255).
Related Reading: Adobe Patches 17 Flaws in Flash Player
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing 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.
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