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CVE-2021-22015 is a set of local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in VMware vCenter Server Appliance, caused by improper permissions on files and directories. An authenticated local user with non-administrative privileges can exploit these permission issues to escalate their privileges to root on the vCenter Server Appliance. The vulnerabilities stem from misconfigured file and directory permissions that allow unauthorized modification or access, enabling privilege escalation.
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This repository contains a single Metasploit module (modules/exploits/linux/local/vcenter_java_wrapper_vmon_priv_esc.rb) that exploits CVE-2021-22015, a local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware vCenter on Linux. The exploit targets improper permissions on the /usr/lib/vmware-vmon/java-wrapper-vmon file, which is writable by the 'cis' group and executed as root when the vmware-vmon service is restarted or the host is rebooted. The module checks for the presence and writability of the target file, backs up the original, uploads a custom payload (generated by Metasploit) to a writable directory (default: /tmp), and overwrites the java-wrapper-vmon script to execute the payload as root. It then attempts to restart the vmware-vmon service to trigger execution. The exploit is operational and provides a root shell or meterpreter session if successful. The code is written in Ruby and is structured as a standard Metasploit local exploit module.
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