VMware Hacked As $150,000 Zero-Day Exploit Dropped
Pwn2Own hackers use $150,000 exploit on VMware ESXi.
The elite hackers attending Pwn2Own in Berlin have made hacking history by successfully deploying a zero-day exploit against VMware ESXi. Having already made the headlines with no less than three zero-days compromising Windows 11 on day one of the hacking competition, day two kept the security surprises well and truly coming. Here's what you need to know.
Organizations have had a lot to digest regarding enterprise technology security issues over the last few weeks. What with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urging them to ensure they are protected against a high-severity Chrome vulnerability already being exploited in the wild, HTTPBot attackers targeting business Windows networks, and Microsoft confirming a critical 10/10 cloud security vulnerability. You might think that the news of VMware ESXi being hacked using a $150,000 zero-day exploit is the icing on the security nightmare cake, but you couldn't be more wrong.
Context is everything, and the context here is the environment in which that zero-day was dropped. Pwn2Own is a twice-yearly hackathon where some of the world's leading hackers come together in friendly competition to see who can hack products and services, within strict time limits, using never-before-seen zero-day exploits, and earn the title Master of PWN. The good news is that this is all above board and legal. Remember that hacking is not a crime, folks, and the products and services being hacked have been submitted by the vendors for the purposes of discovering vulnerabilities before cybercriminals do.
In the case of the VMware ESXi zero-day exploit, this was the first time in Pwn2Own's history, stretching back to 2007, that the hypervisor has been successfully exploited. The hacker behind the achievement, Nguyen Hoang Thach, who is part of the STARLabs SG team, was able to deploy a single integer overflow exploit. This earned them a not-too-shabby reward of $150,000 on the spot, as well as 15 valuable points towards the coveted Master of PWN title.
I have reached out to Broadcom for a statement regarding the VMware ESXi zero-day at Pwn2Own, and will update this article should one be available.
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