VMware ESXi OpenSLP Exploit Attempt - CVE-2021-21974

The Service Location Protocol (SLP) is a service directory protocol that enables network devices to find the location and configuration of networked services on a network. VMware ESXi includes a custom implementation of SLP called OpenSLP, which has a vulnerability in how directory agent advertisement requests are handled. In an exploit attempt, an attacker creates a malicious request. The request exceeds a specified length and contains a known malicious value. OpenSLP processes the malicious request, resulting in a heap overflow. The heap overflow can lead to remote command execution (RCE) with unrestricted privileges on the underlying operating system.