Twin VMware vCenter Zero-Days Expose Critical Infrastructure to Remote Takeover Risk
Two newly disclosed vulnerabilities in VMware vCenter, including an authentication bypass and a directory traversal bug that allows remote code execution, open a high‑value path into the data centers underpinning governments, banks, and critical infrastructure. For administrators running virtualized environments, the risk is immediate: a network‑adjacent attacker could gain full control of core management servers.
A pair of serious flaws in VMware vCenter has created an urgent new attack surface in the virtual infrastructure that powers much of the world’s critical computing. Security advisories published on 6 August describe two vulnerabilities – one enabling authentication bypass in VMware’s Directory Service and another allowing directory traversal in the Syslog server that can lead to remote code execution. Together, they offer a playbook for attackers to slip past login gates and seize control of the very systems used to manage data centers. The first flaw, tracked as CVE‑2026‑59309, affects the VMware Directory Service component of vCenter. According to the disclosure, a malicious actor with network access to…
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