A critical vulnerability affecting VMware vCenter Server, the management interface for vSphere environments, is being exploited in the wild. Attacks started roughly a week after VMware announced the availability of patches.
In an advisory issued on May 25, VMware urged customers to immediately patch CVE-2021-21985 and warned that “the ramifications of this vulnerability are serious.”
VMware explained that the issue, discovered by Ricter Z of 360 Noah Lab, impacts the vSphere Client, specifically the Virtual SAN Health Check plugin, which is enabled by default in vCenter Server even if the plugin is not actually being used. An attacker with access to port 443 can exploit the flaw to execute commands with elevated privileges on the operating system that hosts vCenter Server.
A Chinese researcher who uses the online moniker “iswin” published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit on June 2. Threat intelligence firm Bad Packets reported seeing mass scanning activity targeting CVE-2021-21985 the next day.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont also reported seeing scanning activity aimed at CVE-2021-21985 at around the same time, and on June 4 he confirmed that one of his honeypots was hacked.
Vietnamese security researcher Nguyen Jang has also released a PoC exploit, as well as technical details and a video showing the exploit in action. Ricter Z also d ..
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