VMSA-2021-0020 – 19 vulnerabilities on vCenter

VMware published a new security advisory overnight (VMSA-2021-0020) and it’s a big one. In total, it lists 19 vulnerabilities affecting multiple versions of vCenter. The most serious of the vulnerabilities is the first one – CVE-2021-22005. This vulnerability allows an attacker to upload files to vCenter. This vulnerability could then be used as an avenue to execute code. It’s been giving a CVSS score of 9.8

The second most worrying item on the list (CVE-2021-21991) allows an attacker to escalate their priveleges to Administrator level in the vSphere web interface. This vulnerability has been scored at 8.8.

The resolution for all these vulnerabilities is to update vCenter to the appropriate version. The advistory lists these, and I’ve produced a condensed version below.

Product/VersionUpdate ToNotes
vCenter 7.07.0 U2dThe majority of issues are fixed by going to U2c. U2d resolves CVE-2021-22011 and CVE-2021-22018
vCenter 6.76.7 U3oThis version will resolve all the associated issues with 6.7
vCenter 6.56.5 U3q This version will resolve all the associated issues with 6.5

Given the nature of some of these vulnerabilities, this would be one to get onto ASAP.

vRealize Automation 8.5 Released

A few days ago, VMware released an update for vRealize Automation (vRA). The list of improvements seems relatively minor this time, as detailed in the Release Notes. It seems the biggest change was mentioned in the blog announcement for this release, where vRA is moving to monthly releases. Since these updates are feature focused, that potentially means a more frequent update cycle for administrators. Hopefully this means the update process will become smoother going forward. From personal experience, it’s been a bit hit and miss.

vRealize Automation 8.4 Released

VMware have released another update to vRealize Automation (vRA) 8. Like 8.3, I had issues updating to this version using Lifecycle Manager. This is why I never got around to writing about the 8.3 release. I ended up doing a fresh installation of 8.4 to see what’s new and changed.

What’s New

Going through the Release Notes, it seems that this release is a set of incremental changes. There is a change to how the Access Token for the API functions, which could have an impact on those who are leveraging the REST API. As per the notes, there’s also been a lot of improvements to accessibility. It’s good to see VMware pushing ahead with this sort of initiative.

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Remediating VMSA-2021-0002 – Potential Issues

In late February, VMware published their second security advisory for 2021. It contained contained three items:

  • CVE-2021-21972 – A remote code execution vulnerability in vCenter that has a CVSS score of 9.8
  • CVE-2021-21974 – A vulnerablity in OpenSLP, which is used in ESXi. This one has a CVSS score of 8.8
  • CVE-2021-21973 – Another vCenter vulnerability that was rated with a CVSS score of 5.3

Given the product versions affected, most organisations with relatively up to date virtualisation infrastructure would be at risk from these items. While testing and simulating the update process, I ran into some issues that might be worth publishing for a broader audience.

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