Receiving a 403 response code with an error code CLIENT_IP_BLOCKED when signing into SDDC Manager

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Customers may receive a 403 response code with an error code CLIENT_IP_BLOCKED when signing into SDDC Manager using an account that has had 10 failed login attempts.
 
For the failed login attempts, vcf-commonsvcs.log will show errors similar to the following:
 

Line 262212: com.vmware.evo.sddc.identity.model.error.UnauthorizeException: User is not authorized
Line 2356048: 2023-10-17T22:45:06.684+0000 ERROR [common,af4058d4e458afdb,bc17] [c.v.e.s.e.h.LocalizableRuntimeExceptionHandler,http-nio-127.0.0.1-7100-exec-89301] [9M16I] IDENTITY_UNAUTHORIZED_ENTITY User is not authorized

 
Once the IP is blocked, vcf-commonsvcs.log will show errors similar to the following:
 

Line 2373963: 2023-10-17T23:00:07.294+0000 ERROR [common,b4389a784a0c53af,37e3] [c.v.e.s.e.h.LocalizableRuntimeExceptionHandler,http-nio-127.0.0.1-7100-exec-89300] [L3FJ18] CLIENT_IP_BLOCKED Client IP is blocked.
 Line 2373964: com.vmware.evo.sddc.identity.model.error.BlockedException: Client IP is blocked.
 Line 2374074: 2023-10-17T23:00:10.306+0000 ERROR [common,fa3a06520fc1f5f8,0651] [c.v.e.s.e.h.LocalizableRuntimeExceptionHandler,http-nio-127.0.0.1-7100-exec-89301] [I1KKPU] CLIENT_IP_BLOCKED Client IP is blocked.

 

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1

Cause

If a user tries to log in with invalid credentials 10 or more times, the client IP address will be blocked for 24 hours. 
The blocked IP will not be stored in a file, but rather in the in-memory cache.
 

Resolution

This is an expected behavior intended to protect the system from brute-force attacks.

Workaround:

Restart the commonsvcs service using the following command:

systemctl restart commonsvcs

Alternatively, the SDDC Manager may be rebooted.