VMware warned customers today to immediately patch a critical authentication bypass vulnerability “Affecting local domain users” in multiple products that can be exploited to obtain admin privileges.

“This critical vulnerability should be patched or mitigated immediately per the instructions in VMSA-2021-0014,” VMware warned on Wednesday.

While VMware usually adds a note regarding active exploitation to most security advisories, VMware didn’t include such information in today’s VMSA-2022-0014 advisory.

“The only way to remove the vulnerabilities from your environment is to apply the patches provided in VMSA-2021-0014. Workarounds, while convenient, do not remove the vulnerabilities, and may introduce additional complexities that patching would not,” VMware added.

“While the decision to patch or use the workaround is yours, VMware always strongly recommends patching as the simplest and most reliable way to resolve this type of issue.”

In April, VMware patched another critical vulnerability, a remote code execution bug in VMware Workspace ONE Access and VMware Identity Manager.