Some vulnerabilities have been reported in multiple VMware products, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to bypass certain security restrictions or to gain escalated privileges.

1) A boundary error exists in the implementation of the Host Guest File System (HGFS). This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow in the context of the "vmx" process on the host system.

Successful exploitation requires that shared folders are enabled and at least one folder is shared on the host (not by default).

2) An unspecified error in the Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) implementation can be exploited to execute arbitrary code in the context of the "vmx" process on the host system.

Successful exploitation requires that VMCI is enabled and that the VMware host is running on Windows.

3) An error when processing library paths in the "vmware-authd" program can be exploited to gain escalated privileges on a Linux host machine.

4) Multiple boundary errors in the VMware VIX API can be exploited to cause buffer overflows and execute arbitrary code on a host system.

Successful exploitation requires that the "vix.inGuest.enable" configuration value is enabled.

Solution
VMware Workstation 6.x:
Further details available in Customer Area

Provided and/or discovered by
1, 2) The vendor credits Andrew Honig, Department of Defense.
3) Discovered by an anonymous researcher, reported via iDefense.
4) Reported by the vendor.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2008-0008.html
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2008-0009.html

iDefense:
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/display.php?id=713

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area