In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.55.0307231606160.25752 (at) mail.securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]>

Description

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The following products have a vulnerability that can allow a

user of the host system to start an arbitrary program with

root privileges.

This was previously reported in this advisory:

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/330184

This notice announces an additional release that corrects

this vulnerability. This release is called:

- VMware Workstation 3.2.1 patch 1

Details/Impact

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By manipulating the VMware Workstation environment variables,

a program such as a shell session with root privileges could

be started when a virtual machine is launched. The user would

then have full access to the host.

VMware strongly urges customers Workstation (for Linux

systems) to upgrade as soon as possible.

Customers running any version of Workstation (for Windows

operating systems) are not subject to this vulnerability.

Solution

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To correct the vulnerability in VMware Workstation 3.2, VMware

released the following:

- Workstation 3.2.1 patch 1

Details

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VMware Workstation customers, if covered under the VMware

Workstation Product Upgrade Policy as described at:

http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/pricing.html

are entitled to download and install this updated version from

http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/newstore/download.jsp?ProductCode=WKST
3-

LX-ESD

This is available today.

Upgrade instructions are at

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws3/doc/upgrade_ws.html

Notes

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* VMware wishes to thank Paul Szabo of the University of Sydney for

alerting us

to this vulnerability.

His Web page is at:

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/psz/

* VMware has posted a knowledge base article that describes this problem:

http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1039

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