THE THREAT
On March 30th, 2021, VMware announced two separate high severity vulnerabilities impacting VMware vRealize Operations. The vRealize Operations platform is an IT operations management platform for private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
CVE-2021-21975 (CVSS: 8.6) may be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker with network access to steal administrator credentials. CVE-2021-21983 (CVSS: 7.2) may allow an authenticated threat actor with previous network access to write files to the underlying operating system.
Organizations are strongly recommended to apply the relevant security patches before exploitation is identified in the wild. Exploitation of these vulnerabilities is expected in the near future.
What we’re doing about it
- MVS will automatically add the relevant plugins for these vulnerabilities once details are made available
- eSentire security teams continue to track this topic and additional detection measures are currently under review
What you should do about it
- After performing a business impact review, apply the relevant security patches provided by VMWare
- If patching is not currently feasible, VMware has provided version specific workarounds as a temporary mitigation until patches are deployed
Additional information
At this time, neither vulnerability has been identified being exploited in the wild. Both vulnerabilities were reported by an external security researcher to VMware; this indicates that technical details will be released in the future, increasing the likelihood of eventual exploitation.
CVE-2021-21975 is classified as a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability; exploitation is considered simple. Authentication and user interaction are not required in order to exploit the vulnerability.
CVE-2021-21983 is an arbitrary file write vulnerability that could allow an attacker to write files to arbitrary locations on the underly photon operating system. Abuse of the vulnerability requires authenticated network access.
Impacted Products and Product Suites:
- vRealize Operations Manager versions 8.3.0, 8.2.0, 8.1.1, 8.1.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.0, 7.5.0
- VMware Cloud Foundation (vROps) versions 4.x and 3.x
- vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vROps) version 8.x
References:
[1] https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0004.html
