What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-22005: VMware vCenter Server File Upload Vulnerability

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2021-11-03
• EPSS: 100.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2021-09-23 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

The vCenter Server contains an arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the Analytics service. A malicious actor with network access to port 443 on vCenter Server may exploit this issue to execute code on vCenter Server by uploading a specially crafted file.

Affected products

• VMware Cloud Foundation: from 3.0 before 5.0 — fixed in 5.0
• VMware vCenter Server: 6.5, 6.7, 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server, VMware Cloud Foundation: VMware vCenter Server(7.x before 7.0 U2c and 6.7 before 6.7 U3o) and VMware Cloud Foundation (4.x before 4.3 and 3.x before 3.10.2.2)

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/164439/VMware-vCenter-Server-Analytics-CEIP-Service-File-Upload.html
• https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0020.html
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/164439/VMware-vCenter-Server-Analytics-CEIP-Service-File-Upload.html
• https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0020.html
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-22005

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