Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:NCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2024-22255 is a high-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Vmware Esxi. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique OS Exhaustion Flood (T1499.001); ranked in the top 17% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion contain an information disclosure vulnerability in the UHCI USB controller. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2024-22255 with a CVSS 3.1 score of 7.1 and is associated with CWE-770. It enables leakage of memory contents from the vmx process when the affected USB controller is present in a virtual machine.
A malicious actor who already possesses administrative access inside a virtual machine can exploit the issue locally to read memory belonging to the hypervisor's vmx process. The attack requires no user interaction and crosses the virtualization boundary, resulting in high confidentiality impact without affecting integrity or availability.
The referenced VMware advisory VMSA-2024-0006 supplies mitigation guidance and patch information for the affected products. The associated EPSS score reached a modest peak of 0.0638 before receding to its current value of 0.0498, indicating limited and transient exploitation interest after disclosure.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-19824
Vulnerability Data
VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion contain an information disclosure vulnerability in the UHCI USB controller. A malicious actor with administrative access to a virtual machine may be able to exploit this issue to leak memory from the vmx process.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
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Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.
Requires explicit allocation of resources by priority or quota, directly stopping unlimited allocation.
Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.
Reduces impact of resulting DoS events without preventing the underlying lack of allocation limits.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (higher-evidence rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
- V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
- V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
- V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
- V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
- V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770