VMware has released updates for several of its products to patch a couple of vulnerabilities rated critical and important.
The critical vulnerability is related to how the RMI server of Oracle JRE JMX deserializes authentication credentials. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can leverage the weakness to cause deserialization flaws and execute arbitrary commands.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2016-3427, affects vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0 on both Windows and Linux; vSphere Replication 5.6.x, 5.8.x, 6.0.x and 6.1.x on Linux; vCloud Director 5.5.x, 5.6.x and 8.0.x on Linux; and all non-appliance versions of vRealize Operations Manager 6.x.
Patches and workarounds have been made available for all products, except for vSphere Replication 6.1.x. The vendor noted that vSphere Replication is only affected if the vCloud Tunneling Agent, which is not enabled by default, is running.
The vulnerability rated “important,” identified as CVE-2016-2077, is a host privilege escalation issue affecting VMware Workstation 11.x.x and Player 7.x.x for Windows.
The flaw, reported to VMware by Andrew Smith of Sword & Shield Enterprise Security, allows a local attacker to elevate their privileges due to the fact that the vulnerable products don’t properly reference one of their executables.
Last month, VMware updated vCenter Server, vCloud Director and vRealize Automation Identity Appliance to address a critical vulnerability related to the Client Integration Plugin (CIP), a component that provides access to a virtual machine’s console in the vSphere Web Client.
Related: VMware Patches XSS Flaws in vRealize

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.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- High-Severity Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Patched in VMware Workstation
- GoAnywhere MFT Users Warned of Zero-Day Exploit
- UK Car Retailer Arnold Clark Hit by Ransomware
- EV Charging Management System Vulnerabilities Allow Disruption, Energy Theft
- Unpatched Econolite Traffic Controller Vulnerabilities Allow Remote Hacking
- Google Fi Data Breach Reportedly Led to SIM Swapping
- Microsoft’s Verified Publisher Status Abused in Email Theft Campaign
- British Retailer JD Sports Discloses Data Breach Affecting 10 Million Customers
Latest News
- Fraudulent “CryptoRom” Apps Slip Through Apple and Google App Store Review Process
- US Downs Chinese Balloon Off Carolina Coast
- Microsoft: Iran Unit Behind Charlie Hebdo Hack-and-Leak Op
- Feds Say Cyberattack Caused Suicide Helpline’s Outage
- Big China Spy Balloon Moving East Over US, Pentagon Says
- Former Ubiquiti Employee Who Posed as Hacker Pleads Guilty
- Cyber Insights 2023: Venture Capital
- Atlassian Warns of Critical Jira Service Management Vulnerability
