CVE-2021-21972: VMware vCenter Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Critical severity, CVSS 9.8. Actively exploited: in CISA KEV since 2021-11-03. EPSS: 99.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The vSphere Client (HTML5) contains a remote code execution vulnerability in a vCenter Server plugin. A malicious actor with network access to port 443 may exploit this issue to execute commands with unrestricted privileges on the underlying operating system that hosts vCenter Server. This affects VMware vCenter Server (7.x before 7.0 U1c, 6.7 before 6.7 U3l and 6.5 before 6.5 U3n) and VMware Cloud Foundation (4.x before 4.2 and 3.x before 3.10.1.2).

Affected products

• VMware Cloud Foundation: from 3.0, before 3.10.1.2 (fixed in 3.10.1.2); from 4.0, before 4.2 (fixed in 4.2)
• VMware vCenter Server: version 6.5 only; version 6.7 only; version 7.0 only

Published 2021-02-24. Last modified 2026-08-12.