CVE-2022-21166
Published: 15 June 2022
Summary
CVE-2022-21166 is a medium-severity Incomplete Cleanup (CWE-459) vulnerability in Vmware Esxi. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 38.2% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2022-26409
Vulnerability details
Incomplete cleanup in specific special register write operations for some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Mandates complete sanitization during cleanup so that shared resources (memory, caches, buffers) do not retain data across subjects.
Operational retention schedules mandate complete cleanup of temporary or residual sensitive data after use.
Termination of the non-persistent artifact guarantees cleanup of temporary state, directly countering incomplete cleanup weaknesses.
Fail-safe procedures can explicitly require cleanup of temporary state, resources, or privileges on failure to avoid leaving the system in an inconsistent state.
The explicit delete step when information is no longer needed implements the cleanup that this weakness omits.
Enforces complete cleanup and sanitization steps during disposal, closing gaps that leave data remnants on retired components.