CVE-2022-31681 — VMware ESXi contains a null-pointer deference vulnerability

VMware ESXi contains a null-pointer deference vulnerability. A malicious actor with privileges within the VMX process only, may create a denial of service condition on the host.

01What is this vulnerability?

VMware ESXi contains a null-pointer deference vulnerability. A malicious actor with privileges within the VMX process only, may create a denial of service condition on the host.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / VMware ESXi	VMware ESXi (7.0 prior to ESXi70U3sf-20036586, 6.7 prior to ESXi670-202210101-SG & 6.5 prior to ESXi650-202210101-SG)

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: 2022-10-07T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-03T07:26:01.077Z

09References

• www.vmware.com — https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2022-0025.html