CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2020-3950 — VMware Multiple Products Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
VMware Fusion (11.x before 11.5.2), VMware Remote Console for Mac (11.x and prior before 11.0.1) and Horizon Client for Mac (5.x and prior before 5.4.0) contain a privilege escalation vulnerability due to improper use of setuid binaries. Successful exploitation of this issue may allow attackers with normal user privileges to escalate their privileges to root on the system where Fusion, VMRC or Horizon Client is installed.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2020-03-17
- CISA KEV
- Known exploited
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269
Affected products
- vmware / fusion
- vmware / horizon_client
- vmware / remote_console
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
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Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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