SpoofGuard helps prevent a form of malicious attack called "web spoofing" or "phishing." A SpoofGuard policy blocks traffic determined to be spoofed.

SpoofGuard is a tool that is designed to prevent virtual machines in your environment from altering their existing IP address. In the instance that a virtual machine’s IP address does not match the IP address on the corresponding logical port and switch address binding in SpoofGuard, the virtual machine’s vNIC is prevented from accessing the network entirely. SpoofGuard can be configured at the port or switch level. There are several reasons SpoofGuard might be used in your environment:
  • Preventing a rogue virtual machine from assuming the IP address of an existing VM.
  • Ensuring the IP addresses of virtual machines cannot be altered without intervention – in some environments, it’s preferable that virtual machines cannot alter their IP addresses without proper change control review. SpoofGuard facilitates this by ensuring that the virtual machine owner cannot simply alter the IP address and continue working unimpeded.
  • Guaranteeing that distributed firewall (DFW) rules will not be inadvertently (or deliberately) bypassed – for DFW rules created utilizing IP sets as sources or destinations, the possibility always exists that a virtual machine could have it’s IP address forged in the packet header, thereby bypassing the rules in question.

NSX SpoofGuard configuration covers the following:

  • MAC SpoofGuard - authenticates MAC address of packet
  • IP SpoofGuard - authenticates MAC and IP addresses of packet

  • Dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) inspection, that is, ARP and Gratuitous Address Resolution Protocol (GARP) SpoofGuard and Neighbor Discovery (ND) SpoofGuard validation are all against the MAC source, IP Source and IP-MAC source mapping in the ARP/GARP/ND payload.

At the port level, the allowed MAC/VLAN/IP allow-list is provided through the Address Bindings property of the port. When the virtual machine sends traffic, it is dropped if its IP/MAC/VLAN does not match the IP/MAC/VLAN properties of the port. The port level SpoofGuard deals with traffic authentication, i.e. is the traffic consistent with VIF configuration.

At the switch level, the allowed MAC/VLAN/IP allow-list is provided through the Address Bindings property of the switch. This is typically an allowed IP range/subnet for the switch and the switch level SpoofGuard deals with traffic authorization.

Traffic must be permitted by port level AND switch level SpoofGuard before it will be allowed into switch. Activating or deactivating port and switch level SpoofGuard, can be controlled using the SpoofGuard switch profile.