# CVE-2018-6977: Denial of service in ESXi

> A guest user can trigger an infinite loop in 3D rendering, causing the virtual machine and potentially the host to become unresponsive.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 9 Oct 2018
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-29m2-93j9-hrcp

## What is CVE-2018-6977?

CVE-2018-6977 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Vmware Esxi, published on 9 Oct 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

VMware ESXi (6.7, 6.5, 6.0), Workstation (15.x and 14.x) and Fusion (11.x and 10.x) contain a denial-of-service vulnerability due to an infinite loop in a 3D-rendering shader. Successfully exploiting this issue may allow an attacker with normal user privileges in the guest to make the VM unresponsive, and in some cases, possibly result other VMs on the host or the host itself becoming unresponsive.

Weakness: CWE-835 (Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-6977?

It affects 3 products.


Products: Vmware Esxi, Vmware Fusion, Vmware Workstation.

## How do I fix CVE-2018-6977?

No fix has been published for CVE-2018-6977 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2018-6977 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-6977 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Vmware Esxi

- [CVE-2026-41709](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-41709/): Broadcom VMWare ESX Insufficient Logging (low 2.7, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2019-5521](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-5521/): Information disclosure in VMware ESXi (critical 9.6)
- [CVE-2024-22252](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-22252/): Use-after-free vulnerability (critical 9.3)
- [CVE-2020-3955](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-3955/): Cross-site scripting in ESXi (critical 9.3)
- [CVE-2010-4573](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2010-4573/): Auth bypass in n/a (critical 9.3)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2018-6977 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2018-6977 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Vmware Esxi, published on 9 Oct 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-6977 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Vmware Esxi. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-6977/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-6977/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2018-6977
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-6977
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2018-6977

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-6977/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.