VMware patches third-party components in vSphere platform

VMware has updated third-party libraries and components used by its vSphere server virtualization platform to integrate security patches released in recent months.

The company released vCenter Server 5.5 Update 2 in order to include a patch for a remote code execution vulnerability in the Apache Struts Web framework used inside the product.

The same vCenter Server release updates the Apache Tomcat component to version 7.0.52, originally released in February, which includes fixes for two denial-of-service and one information disclosure vulnerabilities.

VCenter Server 5.5 Update 2 and vCenter Update Manager 5.5 Update 2 change the bundled Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version to 1.7 Update 55 that was released in April. This Java version contains patches for 37 security vulnerabilities.

The VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) received a patch called ESXi550-201409101-SG that updates the included GNU C Library (glibc) in order to address two buffer overflow vulnerabilities that can trigger denial-of-service conditions.

Updates and patches are pending for vCenter Server and ESXi 5.1 and 5.0, the company said in a security advisory.

Security researchers have repeatedly warned in the past that because many software projects use third-party libraries, vulnerabilities identified and patched in those components can linger on in some programs for months and even years. VMware is one of the software makers that do catch up with third-party code patches periodically, but not all of them do.