The VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload device's major security vulnerability will indeed permit root access, and the authority to handle most of the solution administration rights. The lately identified vulnerability, trackable as CVE-2021-21982, with a 9.1 CVSS score, remains in the device's administrative interface and continues to exist because intruders might bypass authentication by manipulating the URL on the interface. VMware Black Cloud Workload is the forum for cybersecurity defense on VMware's vSphere portal for virtual servers and workloads. vSphere is the virtualization platform for VMware cloud computing.
As per the statement made by VMware last week, the problem is caused by inaccurate URL handling. “A URL on the administrative interface of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance can be manipulated to bypass authentication,” the company noted. “An adversary who has already gained network access to the administrative interface of the appliance may be able to obtain a valid authentication token.”
In turn, the intruder would be able to obtain the device management API. Once the intruder is logged in as an admin, it may also access and change administrative configuration settings. The opponent might also perform several attacks, which include code execution, de-activation of security monitoring, or the catalog of virtual instances in the private cloud, and even more since it depends on what instruments the institution has implemented in the environment.
“A malicious actor with network access to the administrative interface of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance may be able to obtain a valid authentication token, granting access to the administration API of the appliance,” VMware notes in an advisory.
VMware's Carbon Black Cloud Workload is being used by organizations in virtualized environments for protecting workloads that offer tools for the evaluation of vulnerabilities, antiviruses, and threats.
Egor Dimitrenko, a positive technologies researcher who has been credited with the discovery of the vulnerability, says that the intruder could definitely use the bug to execute arbitrary code on a server. “Remote Code Execution is a critical vulnerability that gives an attacker unlimited opportunity to perform any attack to company infrastructure,” Dimitrenko underlines.
The researcher explains that the intruder should not usually be able to access the VMware Carbon Black Cloud workload admin panel from the Internet, but also indicates that misconfigurations can result in improper exposure. He says that organizations can implement tools for remote access inside the internal network.
In order to deal with this vulnerability and encourage customers to use the update to stay secure, VMware released version 1.0.2 of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance last week. It is also recommended that network checks should be implemented to ensure limited access to the device admin interface.
Additionally on Friday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an advisory to warn of the vulnerability and raise awareness on the existence of patches for it.
