PlayerApplication · VMware
CVE-2006-3547
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedEMC VMware Player allows user-assisted attackers to cause a denial of service (unrecoverable application failure) via a long value of the ide1:0.fileName parameter in the .vmx file of a virtual machine. NOTE: third parties have disputed this issue, saying that write access to the .vmx file enables other ways of stopping the virtual machine, so no privilege boundaries are crossed
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceEMC VMware Player suffers from a denial of service vulnerability when parsing a .vmx configuration file containing an excessively long value for the ide1:0.fileName parameter. When a user opens or loads this crafted file, it causes an unrecoverable application crash. The attack requires user assistance (opening the malicious file), and third parties have disputed whether this represents a true security issue since write access to .vmx files already allows stopping the virtual machine.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
PlayerApplication
all versionsCVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Confirm VMware Player installationCheck if VMware Player is installed on the system by looking for the executable (typically vmplayer.exe on Windows or vmplayer on Linux) in common installation directories or by searching the system.Affected if VMware Player is installed on the system.
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Identify installed VMware Player versionRun VMware Player and check the version through Help > About VMware Player, or run 'vmplayer -v' from command line. Compare the version number against the affected timeframe (2006 and earlier versions).Affected if The installed version is from 2006 or earlier and is vulnerable.
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Locate .vmx configuration filesSearch for .vmx files on the system, particularly in user directories or virtual machine storage locations. These are the configuration files that VMware Player uses to define virtual machine settings.Affected if User has .vmx files from untrusted sources or older backups.
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Inspect ide1:0.fileName parameter in .vmx filesOpen each .vmx file in a text editor and locate the 'ide1:0.fileName' parameter. Check if the value assigned to it is excessively long or contains a path that exceeds typical length (hundreds or thousands of characters).Affected if The ide1:0.fileName parameter contains an unusually long string value (significantly longer than a normal file path).
A user is affected if they have an old VMware Player version from 2006 or earlier AND open a .vmx file with an excessively long ide1:0.fileName value, causing the application to crash.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataDo not open or load untrusted .vmx virtual machine configuration files in VMware Player. This is a legacy 2006 vulnerability affecting old VMware Player versions; modern versions are not affected.
Fix this in Player
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation1.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $1,200.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2006-3547 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2006-3547 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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