CVE-2017-4941

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2017-12-20 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

VMware ESXi (6.0 before ESXi600-201711101-SG, 5.5 ESXi550-201709101-SG), Workstation (12.x before 12.5.8), and Fusion (8.x before 8.5.9) contain a vulnerability that could allow an authenticated VNC session to cause a stack overflow via a specific set of VNC packets. Successful exploitation of this issue could result in remote code execution in a virtual machine via the authenticated VNC session. Note: In order for exploitation to be possible in ESXi, VNC must be manually enabled in a virtual machine's .vmx configuration file. In addition, ESXi must be configured to allow VNC traffic through the built-in firewall.

Affected products

VMware ESXi: 5.5, 5.5-550-20170901001s, 5.5-550-20170904001, 6.0, 6.0-1, 6.0-1a (+80)
VMware Fusion: from 8.0.0 before 8.5.9 — fixed in 8.5.9
VMware Workstation: from 12.0.0 before 12.5.8 — fixed in 12.5.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware Fusion 8.5.9; VMware Workstation 12.5.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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