VMware vSphere 7.0 ESXi Security Technical Implementation Guide
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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The ESXi host must use DOD-approved certificates.
The default self-signed host certificate issued by the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) must be replaced with a DOD-approved certificate when the host will be accessed directly, such as during a...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must not suppress warnings that the local or remote shell sessions are enabled.
Warnings that local or remote shell sessions are enabled alert administrators to activity they may not be aware of and need to investigate.Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must not suppress warnings about unmitigated hyperthreading vulnerabilities.
The L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) CPU vulnerabilities published in 2018 have patches and mitigations available in vSphere. However, there are performance impacts to these mitigations that require carefu...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must disable port forwarding.
While enabling Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) tunnels is a valuable function of sshd, this feature is not appropriate for use on the ESXi hypervisor.Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must enable audit logging.
ESXi offers both local and remote audit recordkeeping to meet the requirements of the NIAP Virtualization Protection Profile and Server Virtualization Extended Package. Local records are stored on ...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must enable strict x509 verification for SSL syslog endpoints.
When sending syslog data to a remote host via SSL, the ESXi host is presented with the endpoint's SSL server certificate. In addition to trust verification, configured elsewhere, this "x509-strict"...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must verify certificates for SSL syslog endpoints.
When sending syslog data to a remote host, ESXi can be configured to use any combination of TCP, UDP and SSL transports. When using SSL, the server certificate must be validated to ensure that the ...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must configure a session timeout for the vSphere API.
The vSphere API (VIM) allows for remote, programmatic administration of the ESXi host. Authenticated API sessions are no different from a risk perspective than authenticated UI sessions and they ne...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi Host Client must be configured with a session timeout.
The ESXi Host Client is the UI served up by the host itself, outside of vCenter. It is accessed by browsing to "https://<ESX FQDN>/ui". ESXi is not usually administered via this interface for long ...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000033-VMM-000140
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The ESXi host rhttpproxy daemon must use FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules to protect the confidentiality of remote access sessions.
ESXi runs a reverse proxy service called rhttpproxy that front ends internal services and application programming interfaces (APIs) over one HTTPS port by redirecting virtual paths to localhost por...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must be configured with an appropriate maximum password age.
The older an ESXi local account password is, the larger the opportunity window is for attackers to guess, crack or reuse a previously cracked password. Rotating passwords on a regular basis is a fu...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must require TPM-based configuration encryption.
An ESXi host's configuration consists of configuration files for each service that runs on the host. The configuration files typically reside in the /etc/ directory, but they can also reside in oth...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must implement Secure Boot enforcement.
Secure Boot is part of the UEFI firmware standard. With UEFI Secure Boot enabled, a host refuses to load any UEFI driver or app unless the operating system bootloader has a valid digital signature....Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi Common Information Model (CIM) service must be disabled.
The CIM system provides an interface that enables hardware-level management from remote applications via a set of standard application programming interfaces (APIs). These APIs are consumed by exte...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000478-VMM-001980
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Remote logging for ESXi hosts must be configured.
Remote logging to a central log host provides a secure, centralized store for ESXi logs. By gathering host log files onto a central host, it can more easily monitor all hosts with a single tool. It...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must use FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules to protect the confidentiality of remote access sessions.
OpenSSH on the ESXi host ships with a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic module that is enabled by default. For backward compatibility reasons, this can be disabled so this setting can be audited a...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must be configured to not allow gateway ports.
SSH Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection forwarding provides a mechanism to establish TCP connections proxied by the SSH server. This function can provide convenience similar to a virtual...Rule Low Severity -
The ESXi host must be configured with a sufficiently complex password policy.
To enforce the use of complex passwords, minimum numbers of characters of different classes are mandated. The use of complex passwords reduces the ability of attackers to successfully obtain vali...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must prohibit the reuse of passwords within five iterations.
If a user or root used the same password continuously or was allowed to change it back shortly after being forced to change it to something else, it would provide a potential intruder with the oppo...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must be configured to disable nonessential capabilities by disabling Secure Shell (SSH).
The ESXi Shell is an interactive command line interface (CLI) available at the ESXi server console. The ESXi shell provides temporary access to commands essential for server maintenance. Intended p...Rule Medium Severity -
ESXi hosts using Host Profiles and/or Auto Deploy must use the vSphere Authentication Proxy to protect passwords when adding themselves to Active Directory.
If a host is configured to join an Active Directory domain using Host Profiles and/or Auto Deploy, the Active Directory credentials are saved in the profile and are transmitted over the network. ...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must enable a persistent log location for all locally stored logs.
ESXi can be configured to store log files on an in-memory file system. This occurs when the host's "/scratch" directory is linked to "/tmp/scratch". When this is done, only a single day's worth of ...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must configure NTP time synchronization.
To ensure the accuracy of the system clock, it must be synchronized with an authoritative time source within DOD. Many system functions, including time-based logon and activity restrictions, automa...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must enable Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDU) filter on the host to prevent being locked out of physical switch ports with Portfast and BPDU Guard enabled.
BPDU Guard and Portfast are commonly enabled on the physical switch to which the ESXi host is directly connected to reduce the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) convergence delay. If a BPDU packet is s...Rule Medium Severity -
All port groups on standard switches must be configured to a value other than that of the native virtual local area network (VLAN).
ESXi does not use the concept of native VLAN. Frames with a VLAN specified in the port group will have a tag, but frames with VLAN not specified in the port group are not tagged and therefore will ...Rule Medium Severity -
All port groups on standard switches must not be configured to virtual local area network (VLAN) values reserved by upstream physical switches.
Certain physical switches reserve certain VLAN IDs for internal purposes and often disallow traffic configured to these values. For example, Cisco Catalyst switches typically reserve VLANs 1001 to ...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must exclusively enable Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 for all endpoints.
TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are deprecated protocols with well-published shortcomings and vulnerabilities. TLS 1.2 should be enabled on all interfaces and SSLv3, TL 1.1, and 1.0 disabled, where supported. Man...Rule High Severity -
The ESXi host OpenSLP service must be disabled.
OpenSLP implements the Service Location Protocol to help CIM clients discover CIM servers over TCP 427. This service is not widely needed and has had vulnerabilities exposed in the past. To reduce ...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must enable volatile key destruction.
By default, pages allocated for virtual machines (VMs), userspace applications, and kernel threads are zeroed out at allocation time. ESXi will always ensure that no nonzero pages are exposed to VM...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must not be configured to override virtual machine (VM) configurations.
Each VM on an ESXi host runs in its own "vmx" process. Upon creation, a vmx process will look in two locations for configuration items, the ESXi host itself and the per-vm *.vmx file in the VM stor...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must not be configured to override virtual machine (VM) logger settings.
Each VM on an ESXi host runs in its own "vmx" process. Upon creation, a vmx process will look in two locations for configuration items, the ESXi host itself and the per-vm *.vmx file in the VM stor...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host SSH daemon must be configured to only use FIPS 140-2 validated ciphers.
Use of weak or untested encryption algorithms undermines the purposes of using encryption to protect data. ESXi must implement cryptographic modules adhering to the higher standards approved by the...Rule Medium Severity
Node 2
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