Knowledge Base

This patch provides a security update to Openwsman that fixes an invalid content-length vulnerability. (PR 226410)

Openwsman is a system management platform that implements the Web Services Management protocol (WS-Management). It is installed and running by default. It is used in the service console of ESX and in ESXi.

The Openwsman management service on ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 is vulnerable to a privilege escalation flaw, which might allow users with non-privileged ESX or VirtualCenter accounts to gain root privileges.

To exploit this flaw, an attacker would need a local ESX account or a VirtualCenter account with the Host.Cim.CimInteraction permission.

Systems with no local ESX accounts and no VirtualCenter accounts with the Host.Cim.CimInteraction permission are not vulnerable.

This flaw cannot be exploited by users without valid login credentials.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2008-2097 to this issue.

Before installing this patch through esxupdate or Update Manager, you must stop the Openwsman service and restart it after applying the patch.

 

Note: If the Openwsman service is not stopped before installing this patch, the service will not be in a running state after installation. The ESX host will require a reboot.