CVE-2021-39144

CVE-2021-39144 is actively exploited and listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, added March 10, 2023. EIP tracks 1 public exploit from researchers including h00die-gr3y, Sina Kheirkhah, Steven Seeley, including a Metasploit module exploits/linux/http/vmware_nsxmgr_xstream_rce_cve_2021_39144. A Nuclei detection template is also available.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This Metasploit module exploits CVE-2021-39144, an unauthenticated RCE vulnerability in VMware NSX Manager (NSX-V) via XStream deserialization. It leverages a malicious XML payload to execute arbitrary commands as root.

XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. In affected versions this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker has sufficient rights to execute commands of the host only by manipulating the processed input stream. No user is affected, who followed the recommendation to setup XStream's security framework with a whitelist limited to the minimal required types. XStream 1.4.18 uses no longer a blacklist by default, since it cannot be secured for general purpose.