Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in VMware Workstation and GSX Server, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to VMware Workstation and GSX Server searching for gdk-pixbuf modules in a world-writable directory. This can be exploited via a malicious module to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running VMware.

Successful exploitation requires that gdk-pixbuf is not installed on the system.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in VMware Workstation 4.5.2 (build 8848). Reportedly, GSX Server 3.x and Workstation 4.x are affected on Linux systems.

Solution
The vendor recommends installing gdk-pixbuf on affected systems.

Provided and/or discovered by
Tavis Ormandy, Gentoo Linux Security Audit Team.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1588

Gentoo:
http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200502-18.xml

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area