VMware Workstation v6.0.3.80004

VMware Workstation continues to be the most advanced desktop virtualization product for industry-standard PCs. Only VMware Workstation offers broad operating system support for Windows, Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and FreeBSD. The product also features a sophisticated architecture that includes full 64-bit support, industry-first support for up to 10 network interface cards and experimental support for two-way Virtual SMP…

* Windows Vista support: Users can deploy Windows Vista as a guest or host operating system, facilitating re-hosting of legacy systems, enabling upgrade and migration projects with minimal end-user disruption and simplifying Windows Vista evaluations.
* Multiple monitor display: Users can configure one virtual machine to span multiple monitors or multiple virtual machines to each display on separate monitors with this industry-first capability, enhancing desktop productivity.
* USB 2.0 support: Users can take advantage of high-performance peripherals such as Apple iPods and fast storage devices.
* ACE authoring capabilities: As a companion to VMware Workstation 6, VMware now offers a VMware ACE Option Pack, which enables VMware Workstation 6 users to create secure, centrally manageable virtual machines. Mobility is one of the primary benefits of this Option Pack, as it allows users to securely transport virtual machines on portable media devices such as USB memory sticks.
* Integrated Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) functionality: Users can create a virtual machine in minutes by “cloning” an existing physical computer.
* Integrated virtual debugger: Users can deploy, run and debug programs inside a virtual machine directly from their preferred integrated development environments (IDEs), accelerating debugging with this industry-first integration with Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio.
* Background virtual machine execution: Users can run virtual machines in the background without the VMware Workstation user interface for an uncluttered user experience.
* Automation APIs: Users can write scripts and programs that automate and help quicken virtual machine testing with support for VIX API 2.0.

In addition, VMware Workstation 6 advances the state of the art in virtualization technology with groundbreaking new capabilities including:

* Continuous virtual machine record and replay (experimental): Users can record the execution of a virtual machine, including all inputs, outputs and decisions made along the way. On demand, the user can go “back in time” to the start of the recording and replay execution, guaranteeing that the virtual machine will perform exactly the same operations every time and ensuring bugs can be reproduced and resolved.
* Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) support (experimental): VMware Workstation 6 is the first virtualization platform to allow execution of paravirtualized guest operating systems that implement the VMI interface.

New in Version 6.0.3

Workstation 6.0.3 adds full support for the following operating systems:
32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.10 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Asianux Server 3 as a guest operating system
32-bit and 64-bit Turbolinux 10 Server as a guest operating system

Note: The Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger is not yet supported on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 hosts.

On Windows hosts, if you have configured and enabled a shared folder, it is possible for an attacker to write arbitrary content from a guest system to arbitrary locations on the host system (CORE-2007-0930). (bug 200360)

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An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could attain and exploit LocalSystem privileges by causing the authd process to connect to a named pipe that is opened and controlled by the malicious user. (Foundstone CODE-BUG-H-001) In this situation, the malicious user could successfully impersonate authd and attain privileges under which Authd is executing. (bug 193049)

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This release updates the libpng library to version 1.2.22 to remove various security vulnerabilities. (bug 224453)

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This release updates the OpenSSL library to address various vulnerabilities to denial-of-service attacks and buffer overflows. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) assigned the following names to these issues: CVE-2006-2940, CVE-2006-2937, CVE-2006-4343. (bug 216493)

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Workstation 6.0.2 allowed anonymous console access to the guest by means of the VIX API. This release, Workstation 6.0.3, disables this feature. This means that the Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger and the Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger will now prompt for user account credentials to access a guest. (bug 187785)

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Workstation 6.0.3 is also a maintenance bug fix release to improve VMware Workstation 6.0.2. See Fixed Bugs for information about additional bug fixes.