Playing with a Chinese PoC for a VMware CVE! (For fun and ZERO profit)
Introduction
The CVE in question is CVE-2021-21972.
I archived it in the event the repository goes down.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211030123608/https://github.com/NS-Sp4ce/CVE-2021-21972
Obviously don’t run this script on your own machine without proper precautions.
I’m going to be using a Kali Linux virtual machine in VMware to sandbox harm from my actual computer. Speaking of sandbox, I made a snapshot of my virtual machine and ran the script.
On the first run it didn’t execute properly so I investigated line 258 and removed the problem code. (I couldn’t be bothered to fix the actual problem)
I tried understanding the script afterwards to understand what’s going on under the hood. Here’s an extremely surface level breakdown.
-Initializing variables for use later, for example 🠓🠓🠓
init vulnerable url and shell URL
VUL_URI = “/ui/vropspluginui/rest/services/uploadova” WINDOWS_SHELL_URL = “/statsreport/shell.jsp” LINUX_SHELL_URL = “/ui/resources/shell.jsp”
-Verify whether the url is vCenter or VCSA and what version. Check if it’s vulnerable
-Upload corresponding .jsp payload (windows or linux) to vulnerable url, check for success
Chinese C2 Fun Times!!!!
If the upload is successful you will be faced with text that says
”[+] Shell exist URL: {url}, default password:rebeyond”
With no further instructions on how to manage it. Going into the closed issues on the Github page I came across
I downloaded “Behinder” from the releases section of the Github, unzipped it, and attempted to run the jar file held within.
Unsure of what this error message says (I can’t read Chinese) I got to googling and by assumption I determined that the issue had to do with “Javafx” whatever that is.
I downloaded the SDK and moved the “lib” folder to where the jar file was located. Ran the command again and was pleasantly surprised.
Took some fiddling but I eventually bumped into how to add my shell. From there I had access to a shell to escalate privileges or drop a payload as a user.
hypothetically
If you want a breakdown of the CVE itself from the author check out:
https://swarm.ptsecurity.com/unauth-rce-vmware/