HCX - Mobility Agent (MA) host is unaffected from VMware Advisory CVE-2022-31696

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

HCX Mobility Agent (MA) hosts may get flagged for VMware Advisory VMSA-2022-0030 (vmware.com) while running a 3rd party VA scanning tool.

Resolution

The HCX-IX appliance adds the Mobility Agent service as a host object in the vCenter Server. in general, the MA host version pushed from HCX to VC is dependent upon VC/ESX versions, and it’s always backward compatible.

Note: MA host is a dummy ESXi server used to perform vMotion, Cold, and Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) migrations for HCX.

It doesn't expose the same services & open the amount of ports like a traditional ESXi server.