One of the worst case scenarios when securing an ESXi host is disabling the DCUI, enabling lockdown mode, and then losing vCenter for some reason. If your vCenter database is corrupt then you have lost the ability to manage the host. The official answer at this point is to rebuild the host. While I hope you have an automated build process that would make this easy, there is at least one other option to recover your system.

I was looking into Cisco Discovery Protocol details and read that you can negotiate POE using CDP packets. Could a malicious trojan forge some CDP packets and energize the POE link to the PCs nic?