Updated ESXi and ESX 3.5 packages address critical security issue in openwsman

a. Updated Openwsman

Openwsman is a system management platform that implements the Web
Services Management protocol (WS-Management). It is installed and
running by default. It is used in the VMware Management Service
Console and in ESXi.

The openwsman 2.0.0 management service on ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 is
vulnerable to the following issue found by the SuSE Security-Team:

- Two remote buffer overflows while decoding the HTTP basic
authentication header

This vulnerability could potentially be exploited by users without
valid login credentials.

Openwsman before 2.0.0 is not vulnerable to this issue. The ESXi
3.5 patch ESXe350-200808201-O-UG updated openwsman to version 2.0.0.
The ESX 3.5 patch ESX350-200808205-UG updated openwsman to version
2.0.0. These patches are installed as part of the ESX and ESXi
Upgrade 2 release. The ESX patch can be installed individually.

Version Information and Workaround
The following VMware KB articles provide information on how to
obtain the version of openwsman in your environment and what a
possible workaround for the issue might be.
ESXi 3.5
Refer to the VMware KB article at kb.vmware.com/kb/1005818.
ESX 3.5
Refer to the VMware KB article at kb.vmware.com/kb/1006878.

Note: This vulnerability can be exploited remotely only if the
attacker has access to the service console network.
Security best practices provided by VMware recommend that the
service console be isolated from the VM network. Please see
www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/726 for more
information on VMware security best practices.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Project (cve.mitre.org)
has assigned the name CVE-2008-2234 this issue.

The following table lists what action remediates the vulnerability
(column 4) if a solution is available.

• hosted products are VMware Workstation, Player, ACE, Server, Fusion.
  **ESX and ESXi running openwsman 2.0.0 *** ESX and ESXi running version of openwsman before 2.0.0

Note: When the SuSE Security-Team reported this openwsman security
issue, it also reported the openwsman issue described in
CVE-2008-2233. No VMware product is affected by the security
vulnerability described in CVE-2008-2233.