VMSA-2022-0016

• VMware ESXi
• VMware Cloud Foundation

Intel has disclosed multiple side-channel vulnerabilities that impact VMware products running on Intel processors. Patches and advanced settings are available to mitigate these vulnerabilities in affected VMware products.

VMware ESXi contains information leak vulnerabilities when DirectPath I/O (PCI-Passthrough) is utilized. VMware has evaluated the severity of these issues to be in the Low severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 3.8.

A malicious actor with administrative access to a virtual machine that has an attached DirectPath I/O (PCI-Passthrough) device can take advantage of a flaw in memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) fill buffers that may leak information stored in physical memory about the hypervisor or other virtual machines that reside on the same ESXi host if the host utilizes Intel processors.

To mitigate CVE-2022-21123, CVE-2022-21125, and CVE-2022-21166, apply the patches listed in the ‘Fixed Version’ column of the ‘Resolution Matrix’ found below and enable the VMkernel.Boot.forceHyperthreadingMitigation advanced setting documented in KB88632. This mitigation enables the SCAv2 scheduler and will impose the same performance impact that was previously documented.

None.

A supplemental FAQ was created for additional clarification.

None.

None.

ESXi70U3e-19898904:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/rn/vsphere-esxi-70u3e-release-notes.html

ESXi670-202206101-SG:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/rn/esxi670-202206001.html

Mitigation KBs:
ESXi: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88632
VCF 4.x: Patch Pending
VCF 3.x: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88707

FAQ:
https://via.vmw.com/vmsa-2022-0016-qna

Performance White Paper:
https://www.vmware.com/techpapers/2018/scheduler-options-vsphere67u2-perf.html

Mitre CVE Dictionary Links:

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-21123
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-21125
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-21166

FIRST CVSSv3 Calculator:
CVE-2022-21123: https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVE-2022-21125: https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVE-2022-21166: https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N

2022-06-14: VMSA-2022-0016
Initial security advisory.

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