CVE-2017-4943 — VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) (6

VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) (6.5 before 6.5 U1d) contains a local privilege escalation vulnerability via the 'showlog' plugin. Successful exploitation of this issue could result in a low privileged user gaining root level privileges over the appliance base OS

01What is this vulnerability?

VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) (6.5 before 6.5 U1d) contains a local privilege escalation vulnerability via the 'showlog' plugin. Successful exploitation of this issue could result in a low privileged user gaining root level privileges over the appliance base OS.

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2017-12-20T15:29:00.327
• Last modified: 2026-05-13T00:24:29.033

09References

• www.securitytracker.com — http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1040026
• www.vmware.com — https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2017-0021.html
• www.securitytracker.com — http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1040026
• www.vmware.com — https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2017-0021.html