Nutanix AHV is a KVM-based type-1 hypervisor at the core of Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure, and it has absorbed much of the migration away from VMware. Each node runs AHV plus a Controller VM (CVM) that provides the distributed storage fabric, and the whole cluster is managed through Prism. Offensively it is KVM underneath, with Nutanix-specific host, CVM, storage, and Prism surfaces on top.
Subtopics#
- Host access and shell: reaching the AHV host and CVM.
- Guest to host escape: breaking out through QEMU.
- Management plane: Prism and its API.
- Disk and snapshot theft: the storage fabric.
- Known escape exploits: Nutanix, QEMU, and Prism flaws.