This week VMware was in the negative limelight because of hacker Hardcore Charlie (clearly a hacker who watched to much Snoopy in his live). He claims to have stolen VMware ESX source code, not directly from VMware (that would have been really bad) but from the China Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC).

So far he only released publicly some 300MB of the source code, but he is saying he will release all on may 5th.

If source code of ESX and vSphere is out in the open, this of course can become a serious problem as it would make it much easier for hackers to figure out where the weak spots are. (the image supposedly is proof from mr Hardcore charlie that he has the code).

I wrote a while back an article about how many people have their ESX and vCenter boxes directly attached to the internet… you might want to reconsider implementing a firewall in between :-)

Read more about the ‘hack’ in information week.

or visit my article about unsafe placement of ESX servers