VMware-Forum

Disabling Copy and Paste in the Guest Operating System
When VMware Tools is running in a virtual machine, you can copy and paste text to and from the guest operating system. The VMware Virtual Machine Console/VMware Remote Console user's clipboard is accessible to normal (non-root and non-administrator) users and processes within the virtual machine as soon as the console window gains focus. If the console user happened to copy sensitive information to the clipboard prior to using the console, the sensitive data is — perhaps unknowingly — exposed to the virtual machine.
To disable copy and paste for a virtual machine, add the following options to the virtual machine's configuration file:
isolation.tools.copy = FALSE
isolation.tools.paste = FALSE
These options override the settings made in the guest operating system's VMware Tools control panel. They also override the setting in the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences > Input)