CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-38652 — A remote insecure deserialization vulnerability exixsts in VMWare Hyperic Agent 5.8.6

Critical CVSS 9.9

A remote insecure deserialization vulnerability exixsts in VMWare Hyperic Agent 5.8.6. Exploitation of this vulnerability enables a malicious authenticated user to run arbitrary code or malware within a Hyperic Agent instance and its host operating system with the privileges of the Hyperic Agent process (often SYSTEM on Windows platforms). NOTE: prior exploitation of CVE-2022-38650 results in the disclosure of the authentication material required to exploit this vulnerability. NOTE: This vulnerability only affects products that are no longer supported by the maintainer.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.9 (3.1)
Published
2022-11-12
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • vmware / hyperic_agent / 5.8.6

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.