CVE-2007-1877 in Workstation
Summary
by MITRE
VMware Workstation before 5.5.4 allows attackers to cause a denial of service against the guest OS by causing the virtual machine process (VMX) to store malformed configuration information.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/02/2019
The vulnerability described in CVE-2007-1877 represents a critical denial of service weakness in VMware Workstation versions prior to 5.5.4 that stems from inadequate input validation within the virtual machine configuration processing mechanism. This flaw specifically affects the VMX process which handles virtual machine configuration data and fails to properly validate the integrity of configuration information before storing it in memory or persistent storage. The vulnerability manifests when an attacker crafts malformed configuration parameters that, when processed by the VMX component, trigger unexpected behavior leading to system instability and eventual denial of service conditions.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability involves the manipulation of virtual machine configuration files or parameters during the virtual machine initialization or runtime processes. When the VMX process encounters malformed data structures or invalid parameter combinations within the configuration information, it can lead to memory corruption, process termination, or system resource exhaustion that ultimately results in the guest operating system becoming unresponsive or completely inaccessible. This represents a classic buffer overflow or input validation failure scenario where the system fails to sanitize user-supplied data before processing it within the virtualization environment.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to virtualized environments where VMware Workstation is used for development, testing, or production purposes. The denial of service condition can affect multiple virtual machines simultaneously if the configuration corruption affects shared resources or system components, potentially leading to widespread service disruption. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it can be exploited remotely through configuration file manipulation or by crafting malicious virtual machine parameters that are subsequently processed by the vulnerable VMX component.
The underlying technical flaw aligns with CWE-121, which describes heap-based buffer overflow conditions, and CWE-122, which covers buffer overflow vulnerabilities in heap-based memory. The vulnerability also maps to ATT&CK technique T1499.001, which involves disruption of services through resource exhaustion or process termination. Additionally, this weakness demonstrates characteristics of privilege escalation scenarios where an attacker can leverage the virtualization layer to compromise the stability of guest operating systems, potentially leading to more severe consequences if combined with other vulnerabilities.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including upgrading to VMware Workstation 5.5.4 or later versions where the configuration validation has been strengthened to prevent malformed data from causing system instability. Network segmentation and access controls should be implemented to limit unauthorized modification of virtual machine configuration files, while regular security assessments should be conducted to identify potentially vulnerable virtual environments. System monitoring should be enhanced to detect unusual process behavior or resource consumption patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts, and incident response procedures should be established to quickly address potential denial of service conditions affecting virtualized workloads.