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Security: zw008/VMware-NSX

SECURITY.md

Security Policy

Disclaimer

This is a community-maintained open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by VMware, Inc. or Broadcom Inc. "VMware" and "NSX" are trademarks of Broadcom Inc.

Author: Wei Zhou, VMware by Broadcom — wei-wz.zhou@broadcom.com

Reporting Vulnerabilities

If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it privately:

Do not open a public GitHub issue for security vulnerabilities.

Security Design

Credential Management

  • Passwords are stored exclusively in ~/.vmware-nsx/.env (never in config.yaml, never in code)
  • .env file permissions are verified at startup (chmod 600 required)
  • No credentials are logged, echoed, or included in audit entries
  • Each NSX Manager target uses a separate environment variable: VMWARE_<TARGET_NAME_UPPER>_PASSWORD
  • Certificate-based authentication is supported for NSX Manager as an alternative to username/password

Destructive Operation Safeguards

All write operations pass through multiple safety layers:

  1. @vmware_tool decorator — mandatory on every MCP tool; provides pre-checks, audit logging, data sanitization, and timeout control
  2. Double confirmation — CLI destructive commands (segment delete, gateway delete, NAT rule delete) require two separate "Are you sure?" prompts
  3. --dry-run mode — all CLI write commands support preview without execution
  4. Dependency checks — segment deletion verifies port count, gateway deletion checks for connected segments before proceeding
  5. Audit logging — every operation (read and write) is logged to ~/.vmware/audit.db (SQLite WAL) with timestamp, user, target, operation, parameters, and result
  6. Policy engine~/.vmware/rules.yaml can deny operations by pattern, enforce maintenance windows, and set risk-level thresholds

SSL/TLS Verification

  • TLS certificate verification is enabled by default
  • disableSslCertValidation: true exists solely for NSX Manager instances using self-signed certificates in isolated lab/home environments
  • In production, always use CA-signed certificates with full TLS verification

Transitive Dependencies

  • vmware-policy is the only transitive dependency auto-installed; it provides the @vmware_tool decorator and audit logging
  • All other dependencies are standard Python packages (requests, Click, Rich, python-dotenv)
  • No post-install scripts or background services are started during installation
  • PyPI package name: vmware-nsx-mgmt

Prompt Injection Protection

  • All NSX-sourced content (segment names, rule descriptions, gateway configurations) is processed through _sanitize()
  • Sanitization truncates to 500 characters and strips C0/C1 control characters
  • Output is wrapped in boundary markers when consumed by LLM agents

Static Analysis

This project is scanned with Bandit before every release, targeting 0 Medium+ issues:

uvx bandit -r vmware_nsx/ mcp_server/

Supported Versions

Version Supported
1.5.x Yes
< 1.5 No

There aren't any published security advisories