VMware disclosed a critical and unpatched authentication bypass flaw in VMware Cloud Director Appliance

VMware disclosed a critical bypass vulnerability in VMware Cloud Director Appliance that can be exploited to bypass login restrictions when authenticating on certain ports.

VMware disclosed an authentication bypass vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-34060 (CVSS score 9.8), in its Cloud Director Appliance that can be exploited by an attacker with network access to the appliance bypassing login restrictions when authenticating on port 22 (ssh) or port 5480 (appliance management console).

“VMware Cloud Director Appliance contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in case VMware Cloud Director Appliance was upgraded to 10.5 from an older version” reads the advisory published by the company. “On an upgraded version of Cloud Director Appliance 10.5, a malicious actor with network access to the appliance can bypass login restrictions when authenticating on port 22 (ssh) or port 5480 (appliance management console). This bypass is not present on port 443 (VCD provider and tenant login). On a new installation of Cloud Director Appliance 10.5, the bypass is not present.”

The virtualization giant states that Cloud Director Appliance is impacted since it uses a version of sssd from the underlying Photon OS that is affected by CVE-2023-34060.

The flaw was reported to VMware by Dustin Hartle from Ideal Integrations Inc.

VMware urges organizations using the Cloud Director Appliance to follow its documented guidance to mitigate this vulnerability.  

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, VMware)