CVE-2012-1515: VMware Esx

High severity, CVSS 8.3. EPSS: 0.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

VMware ESXi 3.5, 4.0, and 4.1 and ESX 3.5, 4.0, and 4.1 do not properly implement port-based I/O operations, which allows guest OS users to gain guest OS privileges by overwriting memory locations in a read-only memory block associated with the Virtual DOS Machine.

Affected products

• VMware Esx: version 3.5 only; version 4.0 only; version 4.1 only
• VMware ESXi: version 3.5 only; version 4.0 only; version 4.1 only

Published 2012-04-02. Last modified 2026-06-16.