Tag: compliance

Securing VMs

~ Ariel ~ 2 Comments

So you enabled the vSphere Compliance module in vRealize Operations Manager and now your VMs are all reporting the following alert.

“Virtual Machine is violating Risk Profile 1 in VMware vSphere Security Configuration Guide”

Viewing the details shows symptoms similar to the following:

0017

I’m not going to cover the details on what each setting does but for the most part these are safe to run, however if your are concerned about what it might do you should test it for yourself.

Note: This will not remove the floppy drive since the VM needs to be powered down and I didn’t need to disable that for many of the VMs when I built this.

#Selecting the target VMs
$vms = Get-VM
#Looping through each VM and setting the value, to rollback change TRUE to FALSE and re-run the script
foreach ($vm in $vms) {
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.bios.bbs.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.device.connectable.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.device.edit.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.ghi.host.shellAction.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.diskShrink.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.diskWiper.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.dispTopoRequest.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.getCreds.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.ghi.autologon.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.ghi.launchmenu.change -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.ghi.protocolhandler.info.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.ghi.trayicon.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.guestDnDVersionSet.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.hgfsServerSet.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.memSchedFakeSampleStats.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.trashFolderState.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unity.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unity.push.update.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unity.taskbar.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unity.windowContents.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unityActive.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.unityInterlockOperation.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.vixMessage.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.vmxDnDVersionGet.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.monitor.control.disable -Value TRUE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name tools.setInfo.sizeLimit -Value "1048576" -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name vmci0.unrestricted -Value FALSE -Confirm:$false -Force:$true
Get-CDDrive -VM $vm |Set-CDDrive -StartConnected:$false -NoMedia -Connected:$false -Confirm:$false
}

 

Compliance Alert on Uplink dvPortGroups

~ Ariel ~ Leave a comment

Just a quick note on a recent discovery.

When using the vSphere Security Configuration policy in vRealize Operations Manager you may see an alert similar to the following.

RP 1,2,3 – vNetwork.reject-forged-transmit-dvportgroup – The Forged Transmits policy is not set to reject

vrops-security-alert

Checked the config for the security policy on the port groups using:

Get-VDPortgroup | Get-VDSecurityPolicy

After some digging I found that Forged Transmits is enabled on uplink port groups by default but not on regular port groups. This is because the uplink ports will need to pass traffic (VM, management, etc…) for MACs that are not on the interface.

This alert is a false positive and should be excluded from the compliance checker. Time permitting I will follow up with info on how to do this.

tl;dr – don’t disable forged transmits on uplink port groups, something will break

Here is some good background info on forged transmits: http://wahlnetwork.com/2013/04/29/how-the-vmware-forged-transmits-security-policy-works/

Someone else with the same issue: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/577449