CVE-2021-22040

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-02-16 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion contain a use-after-free vulnerability in the XHCI USB controller. A malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine may exploit this issue to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host.

Affected products

VMware Cloud Foundation: from 3.0 before 3.11; from 4.0 before 4.4 — fixed in 3.11, 4.4
VMware ESXi: 6.5-650-202202401, 6.7-670-201806001, 6.7-670-201807001, 6.7-670-201808001, 6.7-670-201810001, 6.7-670-201810101 (+159); 6.5, 6.7, 7.0
VMware Fusion: from 12.0.0 before 12.2.1 — fixed in 12.2.1
VMware Workstation Player: from 16.0.0 before 16.2.1 — fixed in 16.2.1
VMware Workstation Pro: from 16.0.0 before 16.2.1 — fixed in 16.2.1
VMware ESXi , Workstation, Fusion and VMware Cloud Foundation: VMware ESXi (7.0 U3 before ESXi70U3c-19193900, 7.0 U2 before ESXi70U2e-19290878, 7.0 U1 before ESXi70U1e-19324898, ESXi 6.7 before ESXi670-202111101-SG and ESXi 6.5 ESXi650-202202401-SG), Workstation (16.x before 16.2.1), Fusion (12.x before 12.2.1) and VMware Cloud Foundation (4.x before 4.4 and 3.x before 3.11)

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware Cloud Foundation 3.11, 4.4; VMware Fusion 12.2.1; VMware Workstation Player 16.2.1; VMware Workstation Pro 16.2.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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