CVE-2024-37085: VMware ESXi Authentication Bypass Vulnerability

High severity, CVSS 7.2. Actively exploited: in CISA KEV since 2024-07-30. EPSS: 26.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

VMware ESXi contains an authentication bypass vulnerability. A malicious actor with sufficient Active Directory (AD) permissions can gain full access to an ESXi host that was previously configured to use AD for user management https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/joining-vsphere-hosts-to-active-directory.html by re-creating the configured AD group ('ESXi Admins' by default) after it was deleted from AD.

Affected products

• VMware Cloud Foundation: from 4.0, before 5.2 (fixed in 5.2)
• VMware ESXi: version 7.0 only; version 8.0 only

Published 2024-06-25. Last modified 2026-06-17.