Blessed ESXicape, Who Escaped the Machine

Patron of hypervisors, virtual machines that want out, and admins called in the dead of night.

Life

On 4 March 2025 Broadcom warned VMware customers of three vulnerabilities in ESXi, already exploited by attackers and nicknamed ESXicape. Starting from a single compromised virtual machine, where the guest already had elevated privileges, an attacker could break out to the hypervisor and, from there, get their hands on every other machine on the same host.

Prayer

O Blessed ESXicape, who climbs the wall between guest and host, let our virtual machines each stay in their own home. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by applying Broadcom's emergency patches at once and treating every virtual machine as potentially hostile.

One guest that escapes puts the whole building at risk.