VIR Vulnerability Intelligence Relay

CVE-2016-7456

critical
Published 2016-12-29 · Modified 2026-05-06
💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation
CVSS v3
9.8
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4 NEW
—
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
10.0

Description

VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP) 5.5.x though 6.1.x has an SSH private key with a publicly known password, which makes it easier for remote attackers to obtain login access via an SSH session.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
97%
Patch ETA
—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Metasploit modules

exploit_linux/ssh/vmware_vdp_known_privkey rank 600
VMware VDP Known SSH Key
Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

Application impact
VendorProductVersionsFixed
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.1
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.5
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.6
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.7
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.8
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.9
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.10
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.5.11
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.8.0
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.8.1
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.8.2
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.8.3
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection5.8.4
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.0.0
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.0.1
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.0.2
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.0.3
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.0.4
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.1.0
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.1.1
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.1.2
vmware vmwarevsphere_data_protection6.1.3

References

CWEs

CWE-255

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.