What can occur when a hypervisor is improperly designed or configured?

When a hypervisor is improperly designed or configured, a significant risk that can occur is guest escape from a virtualized instance. This refers to the scenario where a malicious user or compromised virtual machine (VM) can access or affect other VMs or the underlying host operating system. Due to the hypervisor's role in managing multiple virtual machines, any weaknesses in its design or configuration can create vulnerabilities that allow for an escape.

Guest escape can lead to severe repercussions, such as unauthorized access to sensitive data across multiple VMs, which can result in data breaches more broadly. The hypervisor should ideally provide strong isolation between virtual machines to prevent this issue; however, when it is not correctly implemented, it can expose security gaps that attackers may exploit.

In contrast, while data breaches, increased latency, and over-provisioning can certainly be issues within virtualized environments, they do not stem directly from the design or configuration of the hypervisor in the same way guest escape does. Therefore, the most accurate answer to the concern posed in the question is the potential for guest escape from a virtualized instance.