Re: Virtualization and Security ?

["Youngquist, Jason R." <jryoungquist () CCIS EDU>]

For VMware ESX 3.0 and 3.5, Tripwire has a free utility called "Tripwire
ConfigCheck" which you can download and run against your VMware ESX
servers.  Based on the VMware Infrastructure 3 Security Hardening
guidelines, it will run a check and give you a pass/fail.  There's also
PDF that can be downloaded which gives suggested remediation options.

Here's the URL:
http://www.tripwire.com/configcheck/

The one downside, is you can't save the results (or at least I haven't
found a good way to, if you find a way to save the results let me know).

Thanks.
Jason Youngquist
Information Technology Security Engineer
Technology Services
Columbia College
1001 Rogers Street, Columbia, MO  65216
(573) 875-7334
jryoungquist () ccis edu
http://www.ccis.edu
 



-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Joel Rosenblatt
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 8:41 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Virtualization and Security ?

And while your thinking about what Randy said, you may also want to
carefully consider what applications you are mixing on the host - it may
be obvious, but 
putting the backup server as a second virtual machine on the same host
is counter productive :-)

That one is fairly simple, but there are much more subtle combinations
that will prove to be a problem.

One thing that we ran into was that the administrator of the hosting
system should be able to shut down each virtual machine separately - we
had one virtual 
machine compromised over a weekend and the only person available was the
admin of the host - so, the whole system was shut down until we could
dig up the admin 
of the bad virtual host.

What these virtual machines save in hardware cost, they mostly make up
in people and time :-)

My 2 cents
Joel Rosenblatt

Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security
Columbia Information Security Office (CISO)
Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033
http://www.columbia.edu/~joel


--On Tuesday, November 11, 2008 9:12 AM -0500 randy marchany
<marchany () VT EDU> wrote:

> One thing to remember about virtualization is that ALL of your virtual
> machines now depend on the security of the host machine. This makes
> system maintenance (patches, new tools, etc.) on the HOST system more
> difficult because of scheduling issues with the services provided by
> the VM systems running on the host.  So, you need to carefully
> consider WHAT services are to be run on a host so that you can do
> maintenance on the host system on a regular schedule.
>
> Since the host system now becomes the target, its security is
paramount.
> -Randy Marchany
> VA Tech IT Security Office
>
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Rappaport,Jason <jbr32 () drexel edu>
wrote:
> > Anand - all of our core infrastructure is virtualized (web servers,
database
> > servers, license servers, etc). We went with VmWare and attended
several
> > Vmware User Group meetings before we went full steam with this
project.
> > VmWare does have a free version of its product VmWare server that is
nearly
> > identical to VI3 (at least the current version is); with the
exception of
> > performance.
> >
> > In regards to security, we have locked down and restricted all access
to our
> > virtualization server to on campus access only.  The virtual machines
that
> > sit on top of VI3 are all secured using traditional methodologies
(firewall,
> > anti virus, anti spyware, etc.).
> >
> > Each virtual machine does daily backups to a NAS device that is
replicated
> > nightly.
> >
> > In the event of a DR scenario, we have a backup virtualization server
> > (VmWare Server) that we can bring online and restore form the latest
> > backups.  We actually had to do this once when we patched VI3 and it
> > corrupted the boot partition.  I had the backup virtualization server
> > started within minutes and it took me 90 minutes to restore from the
latest
> > backups on all VMs; the support contract is well worth it.
> >
> > I am actually working on a project to phase our VmWare server and go
with
> > Vmware ESXi, which is Vmware's free product that runs on bare metal;
Vmware
> > Server runs on top of Linux or Windows.
> >
> > I hope that helps.
> >
> > Thanks, Jay
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Jay Rappaport
> > jasonrap () drexel edu
> > 215.895.1680 office
> > 215.895.6447 fax
> > Systems Administrator
> > Design & Imaging Studios
> > Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design
> > Drexel University
> > http://drexel.edu/westphal
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
> > [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Anand Malwade
> > Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 5:12 PM
> > To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> > Subject: [SECURITY] Virtualization and Security ?
> >
> >
> > Folks,
> >
> > We are looking into Data Center Consolidation and plan to virtualize
most of
> > our servers. Now Virtualization can yield sigificant operational
advantages,
> > but  also introduces among others network, security complexity and
> > management challenges.
> >
> > My question to the forum is
> >
> > a) Is anyone fully virtualized ?  If so was a Vendor hired to perform
this
> > function and are there any lessons learnt  that i should be aware of
with
> > the deployment?
> >
> > b) Has anyone run into significant Security and Risk Issues.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Anand
> >
> >
> > Anand Malwade
> > Information Security Officer,
> > Seton Hall University,
> > Tel: 973 275 2209
> > malwadan () shu edu



Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security
Columbia Information Security Office (CISO)
Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033
http://www.columbia.edu/~joel