Sensitive information disclosure vulnerability resulting from a lack of certificate validation during the File-Based Backup and Restore operations of VMware vCenter Server Appliance (6.7 before 6.7u3a and 6.5 before 6.5u3d) may allow a malicious actor to intercept sensitive data in transit over SCP. A malicious actor with man-in-the-middle positioning between vCenter Server Appliance and a backup target may be able to intercept sensitive data in transit during File-Based Backup and Restore operations.
CVE-2019-5538
This medium-severity CVE scores 5.9 under NVD CVSS v3. EPSS exploit probability: 0.1%, top 71% of all CVEs by exploit prediction. GitHub Security Advisory data not yet ingested — confidence will rise once GHSA publishes (typical lag: hours to days for open-source ecosystem CVEs; never for infrastructure-only CVEs).
- Lower severity and no public exploit yet
No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.
- CVSS v3
- 5.9
- EG Score
- 5.9(medium)
- EPSS
- 46.8%
- KEV
- Not listed
Published
October 28, 2019
Last Modified
November 21, 2024
References (2)
- security@vmwarehttps://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2019-0018.html
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2019-0018.html
Weakness Classification(1)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 9× in last 7d / 47× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
- 2026-07-06 16:25 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-05-27 12:30 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-05-27 12:30 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-05-26 13:42 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-05-24 16:47 UTCEPSS rescore
Frequently asked(5)
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Dependency Blast Radius
Explore the affected products and dependency analysis for CVE-2019-5538
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