VMware Patches ESXi Vulnerability That Earned Hacker $200,000
VMware on Thursday informed customers that it has released patches for a critical remote code execution vulnerability in ESXi that was disclosed recently at the Tianfu Cup hacking competition in China.
According to organizers of the Tianfu Cup, a member of the 360Vulcan team demonstrated a virtual machine escape and took control of the host operating system. The exploit only took 24 seconds to execute and earned the hacker $200,000, the highest single payout at the event.
VMware representatives were present at the competition so they were provided the details of the exploit immediately after the demonstration on November 17. The company’s investigation revealed that the vulnerability exploited at the event affects ESXi versions 6.0, 6.5 and 6.7 running on any platform, and the Horizon cloud desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) platform version 8.x.
