CVE-2017-4941

high

Published 2017-12-20 · Modified 2026-05-13

CVSS v3

8.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v2

6.0

VIR risk

8.8

Description

VMware ESXi (6.0 before ESXi600-201711101-SG, 5.5 ESXi550-201709101-SG), Workstation (12.x before 12.5.8), and Fusion (8.x before 8.5.9) contain a vulnerability that could allow an authenticated VNC session to cause a stack overflow via a specific set of VNC packets. Successful exploitation of this issue could result in remote code execution in a virtual machine via the authenticated VNC session. Note: In order for exploitation to be possible in ESXi, VNC must be manually enabled in a virtual machine's .vmx configuration file. In addition, ESXi must be configured to allow VNC traffic through the built-in firewall.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

92%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: security@vmware.com — https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2017-0021.html

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
macos	-	not-affected

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
vmware	fusion	`{"startIncluding":"8.0.0","endExcluding":"8.5.9"}`	`8.5.9`
vmware	workstation	`{"startIncluding":"12.0.0","endExcluding":"12.5.8"}`	`12.5.8`

References

CWEs

CWE-119

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.