CVE-2023-20855 — VMware vRealize Orchestrator contains an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability

VMware vRealize Orchestrator contains an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability. A malicious actor, with non-administrative access to vRealize Orchestrator, may be able to use specially crafted input to bypass XML parsing restrictions leading to access to sensitive information o

01What is this vulnerability?

VMware vRealize Orchestrator contains an XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability. A malicious actor, with non-administrative access to vRealize Orchestrator, may be able to use specially crafted input to bypass XML parsing restrictions leading to access to sensitive information or possible escalation of privileges.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / VMware vRealize Orchestrator, VMware vRealize Automation, VMware Cloud Foundation	VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.x

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: 2023-02-21T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-03-17T18:25:24.743Z

09References

• www.vmware.com — https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2023-0005.html