| Title | Author | Created | Published | Tags | | ------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | -------------- | -------------- | ---------------------------- | | Critical VMware Vulnerabilities | <ul><li>Jon Marien</li></ul> | March 05, 2025 | March 05, 2025 | [[#issessions\|#issessions]] | # Critical VMware Vulnerabilities - Presentation ## Explanations of VMware Vulnerabilities ### 1. CVE-2025-22224 (Critical) *The Prison Break Vulnerability* **Newcomers:** Imagine a burglar escaping their jail cell to take over the entire prison guard system. This flaw lets attackers break out of a single virtual machine (VM) to control the whole physical server hosting it. **Tech Fluent:** A heap buffer overflow in VMCI (VM communication interface) enables VM escape through improper memory handling. Successful exploitation grants hypervisor-level privileges via TOCTOU (time-of-check to time-of-use) race conditions. --- ### 2. CVE-2025-22225 (High) *The Forged Security Pass Vulnerability* **Newcomers:** Like someone forging ID badges to access restricted areas, this lets attackers modify critical system files to bypass security checks. **Tech Fluent:** An arbitrary write vulnerability in ESXi's kernel allows authenticated admins to write malicious code to protected memory regions, enabling sandbox escape and persistent access. --- ### 3. CVE-2025-22226 (High) *The Office Document Leak Vulnerability* **Newcomers:** Comparable to finding sensitive documents left in a shared printer, this exposes internal system details that help plan more sophisticated attacks. **Tech Fluent:** HGFS (Host-Guest File System) improper access control exposes VMX process memory contents, leaking cryptographic material and system metadata to authenticated users. --- ## Why These Matter Together **Attack Scenario:** 1. Attacker starts in a VM (tenant access) 2. Uses CVE-2025-22226 to gather intel 3. Chains CVE-2025-22225 to gain host access 4. Escapes to hypervisor with CVE-2025-22224 **Result:** Full control of all VMs on the server. ----- # Script ## Why This Matters Hello all, today I will be talking about a set of VMware flaws that are actively being exploited in the real world. These vulnerabilities represent a perfect storm for attackers targeting virtualized environments. As future cybersecurity pros (and current defenders!), understanding hypervisor-level threats is critical—especially since VMware ESXi powers ~70% of enterprise data centers. These vulnerabilities allow attackers to “jailbreak” out of a single VM and hijack the entire host server, putting all hosted workloads at risk. VMware (now Broadcom) disclosed three flaws on **March 4, 2025**, with patches released alongside advisories. Within hours, CISA added them to its Must-Patch list after observing malicious exploitation attempts targeting: - **Cloud providers using VMware ESXi.** - **Telecoms running VMware Telco Cloud.** - **Dev teams with Workstation/Fusion.** The vulnerabilities are dangerous alone but catastrophic when chained—attackers can pivot from basic VM access to full hypervisor takeover in minutes. Now, I will breakdown each vulnerability in ways such that both newcomers and techies will understand it.