Detections
Analytics

ESXi 6.5 / 6.7 / 7.0 (VMSA-2022-0020.2)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 376452

Synopsis

The ESXi is affected by multiple vulnerabilities.

Description

The version of ESXi installed on the remote host is prior to 6.5, 6.7, 7.0. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the VMSA-2022-0020.2 advisory.

 - Intel microprocessor generations 6 to 8 are affected by a new Spectre variant that is able to bypass their retpoline mitigation in the kernel to leak arbitrary data. An attacker with unprivileged user access can hijack return instructions to achieve arbitrary speculative code execution under certain microarchitecture-dependent conditions. (CVE-2022-29901)

 - Aliases in the branch predictor may cause some AMD processors to predict the wrong branch type potentially leading to information disclosure. (CVE-2022-23825)

 - Rejected reason: DO NOT USE THIS CANDIDATE NUMBER. ConsultIDs: none. Reason: This candidate is unused by its CNA. Notes: none. (CVE-2022-23816)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Apply the relevant patch referenced in the VMSA-2022-0020.2 advisory.

See Also

https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2022-0020.html

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 376452

File Name: vmware_esxi_vmsa-2022-0020.2.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Remote

Family: Misc.

Published: 11/5/2026

Updated: 11/5/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6

Percentile: 96.22

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2022-23825

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Temporal Score: 5.7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2022-29901

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:vmware:esxi

Required KB Items: Host/VMware/version, Host/VMware/release, Host/VMware/vsphere

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 7/12/2022

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/21/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2022-23825, CVE-2022-26373, CVE-2022-28693, CVE-2022-29901