CVE-2021-22043

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.1% 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-367

Description

VMware ESXi contains a TOCTOU (Time-of-check Time-of-use) vulnerability that exists in the way temporary files are handled. A malicious actor with access to settingsd, may exploit this issue to escalate their privileges by writing arbitrary files.

Affected products

VMware ESXi: 7.0-update_1, 7.0-update_2, 7.0-update_3
VMware Fusion: before 4.4 — fixed in 4.4
VMware ESXi and VMware Cloud Foundation: VMware ESXi(7.0 U3 before ESXi70U3c-19193900, 7.0 U2 before ESXi70U2e-19290878 and 7.0 U1 before ESXi70U1e-19324898) and VMware Cloud Foundation 4.x before 4.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware Fusion 4.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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