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Broadcom announced back in May of 2022 that it would buy VMware for $61 billion and take on an additional $8 billion of the company's debt, and on November 22 of 2023 Broadcom said that it had completed the acquisition . And it looks like Broadcom's first big move is going to be layoffs: according to WARN notices filed with multiple states (catalogued here by Channel Futures), Broadcom will be laying off at least 2,837 employees across multiple states, including 1,267 at its Palo Alto campus in California.

As Channel Futures notes, the actual number of layoffs could be higher, since not all layoffs require WARN notices. We've contacted Broadcom for more information about the total number of layoffs and the kinds of positions that are being affected and will update if we receive a response. VMware has around 38,300 employees worldwide.

The WARN notices list the reason for the layoffs as "economic," but provide no further explanation or justification.

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An explosion of cyberattacks is infecting servers around the world with crippling ransomware by exploiting a vulnerability that was patched two years ago, it was widely reported on Monday.

The hacks exploit a flaw in ESXi, a hypervisor VMware sells to cloud hosts and other large-scale enterprises to consolidate their hardware resources. ESXi is what’s known as a bare-metal , or Type 1, hypervisor, meaning it’s essentially its own operating system that runs directly on server hardware. By contrast, servers running the more familiar Type 2 class of hypervisors, such as VMware’s VirtualBox, run as apps on top of a host operating system. The Type 2 hypervisors then run virtual machines that host their own guest OSes such as Windows, Linux or, less commonly, macOS.

Enter ESXiArgs

Advisories published recently by computer emergency response teams (CERT) in France , Italy , and Austria report a “massive” campaign that began no later than Friday and has gained momentum since then. Citing results of a search on Census, CERT officials in Austria, said that as of Sunday, there were more than 3,200 infected servers, including eight in that country.

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Exploit code was released this week for a just-patched vulnerability in VMware Cloud Foundation and NSX Manager appliances that allows hackers with no authentication to execute malicious code with the highest system privileges.

VMware patched the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-39144, on Tuesday and issued it a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10. The vulnerability, which resides in the XStream open source library that Cloud Foundation and NSX Manager rely on, posed so much risk that VMware took the unusual step of patching versions that were no longer supported. The vulnerability affects Cloud Foundation versions 3.11 and lower. Versions 4.x aren’t at risk.

“VMware Cloud Foundation contains a remote code execution vulnerability via XStream open source library,” the company’s advisory, published Tuesday, read. “Due to an unauthenticated endpoint that leverages XStream for input serialization in VMware Cloud Foundation (NSX-V), a malicious actor can get remote code execution in the context of 'root' on the appliance.”

(credit: Pixabay )

Hackers have been exploiting a now-patched vulnerability in VMware Workspace ONE Access in campaigns to install various ransomware and cryptocurrency miners, a researcher at security firm Fortinet said on Thursday.

CVE-2022-22954 is a remote code execution vulnerability in VMware Workspace ONE Access that carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10. VMware disclosed and patched the vulnerability on April 6. Within 48 hours, hackers reverse-engineered the update and developed a working exploit that they then used to compromise servers that had yet to install the fix. VMware Workspace ONE access ​​helps administrators configure a suite of apps employees need in their work environments.

In August, researchers at Fortiguard Labs saw a sudden spike in exploit attempts and a major shift in tactics. Whereas before the hackers installed payloads that harvested passwords and collected other data, the new surge brought something else—specifically, ransomware known as RAR1ransom, a cryptocurrency miner known as GuardMiner, and Mirai, software that corrals Linux devices into a massive botnet for use in distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Broadcom’s $69 billion acquisition of cloud software company VMware is set for a lengthy antitrust investigation in Brussels over regulatory concerns that the deal will harm competition across the global technology industry.

Broadcom is already in preliminary discussions with EU officials who will be looking into worries that the merger may lead to abusive behavior, including potential future price rises by the US chipmaker, three people with direct knowledge of the transaction said.

Many large acquisitions receive similar interrogation, known in EU circles as a “phase 1” investigation, which typically takes a few months to complete.

Enlarge / A sign in front of a Broadcom office on June 03, 2021, in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

Broadcom announced last week that it was seeking to drop $61 billion in cash and stock to acquire VMware. We still don't know exactly what changes Broadcom plans to make to VMware's products or business model once the acquisition completes. Still, Broadcom Software Group President Tom Krause made it clear in Broadcom's earnings call last week: an emphasis on software subscriptions.

As reported by The Register , Broadcom plans a "rapid transition from perpetual licenses to subscriptions" for VMware's products, replacing discrete buy-once-use-forever versions, though "rapid" in this case will still apparently take several years. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said that the company wants to keep VMware's current customers happy and take advantage of VMware's existing sales team and relationships.

Subscription-based software has some benefits, including continual updates to patch security flaws and ensure compatibility with new operating system updates—virtualization software that requires low-level hardware access gets broken more often by new OS updates than most other apps. But a move toward more subscription-based software licensing could still be unwelcome news for individuals and businesses who prefer to pay for individual upgrades as they want or need them, rather than continuously for as long as they need the software.

Enlarge (credit: VMWare)

Chipmaker Broadcom will be acquiring VMware for $61 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced today .

Broadcom is best known for designing and selling a wide range of chips for wired and wireless communication, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips and the processors that power many routers and modems. But the company has spent billions in recent years to acquire an enterprise software portfolio — $18.9 billion for CA Technologies in 2018 and $10.7 billion for Symantec in 2019. The VMware buy is much larger than either of those purchases, but it fits the pattern of Broadcom's other software acquisitions.

Once the acquisition is completed, the Broadcom Software Group will adopt the VMware name. If approved, Broadcom expects the transaction to be complete at some point in 2023.

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Malicious hackers, some believed to be state-backed, are actively exploiting two unrelated vulnerabilities—both with severity ratings of 9.8 out of a possible 10—in hopes of infecting sensitive enterprise networks with backdoors, botnet software, and other forms of malware.

The ongoing attacks target unpatched versions of multiple product lines from VMware and of BIG-IP software from F5, security researchers said. Both vulnerabilities give attackers the ability to remotely execute malicious code or commands that run with unfettered root system privileges. The largely uncoordinated exploits appear to be malicious, as opposed to benign scans that attempt to identify vulnerable servers and quantify their number.

First up: VMware

On April 6, VMware disclosed and patched a remote code execution vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-22954 and a privilege escalation flaw tracked as CVE-2022-22960. According to an advisory published on Wednesday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “malicious cyber actors were able to reverse engineer the updates to develop an exploit within 48 hours and quickly began exploiting the disclosed vulnerabilities in unpatched devices.”

For the past few week I’ve had a really frustrating time dealing with a customer system. Initially I put it down to me moving to Manjaro and the VMWare Horizon client having some issue. So I installed on my Debian laptop and still the same issue. This was really frustrating as when using the remote &ellipsisRead the full post »

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