CVE-2015-2594 in Virtualization VirtualBox
Summary
by MITRE
Unspecified vulnerability in the Oracle VM VirtualBox component in Oracle Virtualization VirtualBox prior to 4.0.32, 4.1.40, 4.2.32, and 4.3.30 allows local users to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability via unknown vectors related to Core.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/02/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-2594 resides within Oracle VM VirtualBox's Core component, representing a significant security weakness that affected multiple versions of the popular virtualization software. This unspecified flaw existed in Oracle VirtualBox versions prior to 4.0.32, 4.1.40, 4.2.32, and 4.3.30, indicating a widespread impact across the software's major release lines. The vulnerability's classification as affecting confidentiality, integrity, and availability demonstrates its potential to compromise all three fundamental pillars of information security, making it particularly dangerous in enterprise and organizational environments where virtualization is extensively deployed.
The technical nature of this vulnerability stems from unspecified attack vectors within the Core component of VirtualBox, which serves as the foundational element responsible for managing virtual machine operations, memory management, and system resource allocation. The Core component's role in handling critical virtualization functions means that any weakness in this area could potentially allow attackers to manipulate the underlying virtualization environment. This vulnerability's impact extends beyond simple data compromise, as it can affect the complete operational integrity of virtual machines, potentially enabling attackers to modify system behavior, access restricted resources, or disrupt service availability through the virtualization layer.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents substantial risks for organizations relying on Oracle VirtualBox for their virtualization infrastructure. Local users with access to systems running vulnerable versions could exploit this weakness to gain unauthorized access to virtual machine data, potentially leading to data breaches, system corruption, or service disruptions. The availability impact means that attackers could potentially cause virtual machines to crash or become unresponsive, leading to denial of service conditions that could affect business operations. The confidentiality aspect suggests that sensitive data within virtualized environments might be accessible to unauthorized parties, while integrity concerns indicate that virtual machine configurations or guest operating systems could be modified without detection.
The vulnerability's classification aligns with common attack patterns documented in the ATT&CK framework, particularly those related to privilege escalation and credential access. Attackers could leverage this weakness to move laterally within virtualized environments, potentially escalating privileges to gain broader system access. Organizations implementing virtualization strategies should consider this vulnerability as part of their overall security posture assessment, especially in environments where multiple virtual machines share underlying physical resources. The vulnerability's presence in multiple version streams indicates that organizations across different VirtualBox release cycles needed to implement remediation measures to protect their virtualized infrastructures from potential exploitation.
Security practitioners should prioritize patching vulnerable systems to address this issue, as the unspecified nature of the attack vectors suggests that exploitation methods could be diverse and potentially sophisticated. The vulnerability's impact across multiple release versions underscores the importance of maintaining up-to-date virtualization software and implementing proper security monitoring for virtual environments. Organizations should also consider implementing additional security controls such as virtual machine isolation, network segmentation, and regular vulnerability assessments to reduce the potential attack surface and mitigate the risks associated with such core component weaknesses in virtualization platforms.