This sounds suspiciously like the Supermicro BMC bug reported here a while back[1], and while it actually can be hard to make sure the IPMI stuff doesn't take o

This sounds suspiciously like the Supermicro BMC bug reported here a while back[1], and while it actually can be hard to make sure the IPMI stuff doesn't take over a NIC you don't want it to[2], there are things you can do to prevent that, such as explicitly setting IPMI interface and address information so it won't use "smart" behavior to negate all your security. As to whether "no-one could know", well, I knew after I read that HN submission, and at work we made sure to double check all our configs. This ended up being mostly a known problem, but the extra context helped us find another edge case I believe. It's not great that you have to be aware of the latest security problems and how they may interact in obscure ways with system configs, but that's the nature of security and state of the industry right. Not much to do except buckle down and pay attention. To everything. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20870686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20870686 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20872084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20872084