VMware patches privilege escalation vulnerability in Fusion, Horizon
Security
VMware has resolved two vulnerabilities that could lead to privilege escalation or denial-of-service conditions in a variety of software.
On Tuesday, the virtualization software provider published a security advisory describing CVE-2020-3950 and CVE-2020-3951, a pair of bugs deemed important and low in severity, respectively.
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The first security flaw, CVE-2020-3950, is a privilege escalation bug caused by the improper use of setuid binaries that has been awarded a CVSS score of 7.3.
"Successful exploitation of this issue may allow attackers with normal user privileges to escalate their privileges to root on the system where Fusion, VMRC or Horizon Client is installed," the vulnerability description reads.
VMware Fusion versions 11.x before 11.5.2, VMware Remote Console for Mac versions 11.x and prior before 11.0.1, and Horizon Client for Mac, versions 5.x and prior before 5.4.0 are impacted.
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The second security issue now resolved by VMware is CVE-2020-3951, a vulnerability caused by a heap overflow error in Cortado Thinprint, a virtual printing engine used by VMware Workstation and the Windows Horizon Client. Attackers with non-administrative controls and access to a guest virtual machine with this feature enabled can cause denial-of-service conditions.
It is important to note that virtual printing is not enabled by default on Workstation, but is enabled by default on the Horizon Client.
VMware Workstation versions 15.x before 15.5.2 and Horizon versions 5.x and prior before 5.4.0 are affected by the bug. However, impact is deemed low, resulting in a CVSS score of 3.2.
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Jeffball of GRIMM, Rich Mirch, and FireEye's Dhanesh Kizhakkinan were thanked for reporting the security issues. It is recommended that users apply automatic updates as they appear.
In related news, Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday included fixes for 155 vulnerabilities, 26 of which are deemed critical. However, the main issue of note was how the Redmond giant recently leaked details relating to an SMBv3 vulnerability that was yet to receive a patch.
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Previous and related coverage
- Financial companies leak 425GB in company, client data through open database
- Microsoft March 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 115 vulnerabilities
- Adobe releases out-of-band patch for critical code execution vulnerabilities
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