CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-22043 — VMware ESXi contains a TOCTOU (Time-of-check Time-of-use) vulnerability that exists in the way temporary files are handled

High CVSS 7.5

VMware ESXi contains a TOCTOU (Time-of-check Time-of-use) vulnerability that exists in the way temporary files are handled. A malicious actor with access to settingsd, may exploit this issue to escalate their privileges by writing arbitrary files.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2022-02-16
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-367

Affected products

  • vmware / fusion
  • vmware / esxi / 7.0

Showing 2 representative product identities from 4 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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