VMware vSphere 8.0 ESXi Security Technical Implementation Guide
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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SRG-OS-000342-VMM-001230
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The ESXi host must off-load audit records via syslog.
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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SRG-OS-000037-VMM-000150
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SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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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 -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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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 -
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 configure the firewall to restrict access to services running on the host.
Unrestricted access to services running on an ESXi host can expose a host to outside attacks and unauthorized access. Reduce the risk by configuring the ESXi firewall to only allow access from auth...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 not use the default Active Directory ESX Admin group.
When adding ESXi hosts to Active Directory, all user/group accounts assigned to the Active Directory group "ESX Admins" will have full administrative access to the host. If this group is not contr...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000341-VMM-001220
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The ESXi host must configure 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 -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must enforce the exclusive running of executables from approved VIBs.
The "execInstalledOnly" advanced ESXi boot option, when set to TRUE, guarantees that the VMkernel executes only those binaries that have been packaged as part of a signed VIB. While this option is ...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must use sufficient entropy for cryptographic operations.
Starting in vSphere 8.0, the ESXi Entropy implementation supports the FIPS 140-3 and EAL4 certifications. Kernel boot options control which entropy sources to activate on an ESXi host. In computin...Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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SRG-OS-000033-VMM-000140
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The ESXi host must use DOD-approved encryption to protect the confidentiality of network sessions.
Without confidentiality protection mechanisms, unauthorized individuals may gain access to sensitive information via a remote access session. In ESXi 8.0 Update 3 and newer TLS profiles are availab...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 deny shell access for the dcui account.
The dcui user is used for process isolation for the DCUI itself. The account has shell access which can be deactivated to reduce attack surface.Rule Medium Severity -
SRG-OS-000480-VMM-002000
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The ESXi host must disable virtual hardware management network interfaces.
Hardware management controllers often present virtual or USB NICs to the ESXi host. These can be used as backdoors and should be deactivated both in the hardware configuration and in ESXi.Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must display the Standard Mandatory DOD Notice and Consent Banner before granting access to the system via the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI).
Display of a standardized and approved use notification before granting access to the host ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Execut...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must enforce password complexity by configuring a password quality 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 valid...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must uniquely identify and must authenticate organizational users by using Active Directory.
Join ESXi hosts to an Active Directory domain to eliminate the need to create and maintain multiple local user accounts. Using Active Directory for user authentication simplifies the ESXi host conf...Rule Low Severity -
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 -
The ESXi host must synchronize internal information system clocks to an authoritative time source.
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 protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information by isolating vMotion traffic.
While encrypted vMotion is available, vMotion traffic should still be sequestered from other traffic to further protect it from attack. This network must only be accessible to other ESXi hosts, pre...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host DCUI.Access list must be verified.
Lockdown mode disables direct host access, requiring that administrators manage hosts from vCenter Server. However, if a host becomes isolated from vCenter, the administrator is locked out and can ...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must be configured to disable nonessential capabilities by disabling the ESXi shell.
The ESXi Shell is an interactive command line environment available locally from the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) or remotely via SSH. Activities performed from the ESXi Shell bypass vCente...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host must protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information by isolating ESXi management traffic.
The vSphere management network provides access to the vSphere management interface on each component. Services running on the management interface provide an opportunity for an attacker to gain pri...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host lockdown mode exception users list must be verified.
While a host is in lockdown mode (strict or normal), only users on the "Exception Users" list are allowed access. These users do not lose their permissions when the host enters lockdown mode. The...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host Secure Shell (SSH) daemon must not allow host-based authentication.
SSH trust relationships mean a compromise on one host can allow an attacker to move trivially to other hosts. SSH's cryptographic host-based authentication is more secure than ".rhosts" authenticat...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 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 -
The ESXi host must configure virtual switch security policies to reject Media Access Control (MAC) address changes.
If the virtual machine (VM) operating system changes the MAC address, it can send frames with an impersonated source MAC address at any time. This allows it to stage malicious attacks on the device...Rule High Severity -
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 -
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 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 -
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 -
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 -
The ESXi host must forward audit records containing information to establish what type of events occurred.
Without establishing what types of events occurred, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be n...Rule Medium Severity -
The ESXi host when 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. T...Rule Medium Severity
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