VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) Security Technical Implementation Guide

Overview

Version	Date	Finding Count (24)			Downloads
1	2023-10-29	CAT I (High): 1	CAT II (Med): 23	CAT III (Low): 0	Excel	JSON	XML

STIG Description
This Security Technical Implementation Guide is published as a tool to improve the security of Department of Defense (DOD) information systems. The requirements are derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 and related documents. Comments or proposed revisions to this document should be sent via email to the following address: disa.stig_spt@mail.mil.

Available Profiles

Classified	Public	Sensitive
I - Mission Critical Classified	I - Mission Critical Public	I - Mission Critical Sensitive	II - Mission Support Classified	II - Mission Support Public	II - Mission Support Sensitive	III - Administrative Classified	III - Administrative Public	III - Administrative Sensitive

Findings (MAC III - Administrative Sensitive)

Finding ID	Severity	Title	Description
V-259148	High	The vCenter VAMI service must enable FIPS mode.	Encryption is only as good as the encryption modules used. Unapproved cryptographic module algorithms cannot be verified and cannot be relied on to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DOD...
V-259137	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must limit the number of allowed simultaneous session requests.	Denial of service (DoS) is one threat against web servers. Many DoS attacks attempt to consume web server resources in such a way that no more resources are available to satisfy legitimate...
V-259149	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must restrict the ability of users to launch Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against other information systems or networks.	In UNIX and related computer operating systems, a file descriptor is an indicator used to access a file or other input/output resource, such as a pipe or network connection. File descriptors index...
V-259160	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must enable Content Security Policy.	A Content Security Policy (CSP) requires careful tuning and precise definition of the policy. If enabled, CSP has significant impact on the way browsers render pages (e.g., inline JavaScript is...
V-259147	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must restrict access to the web server's private key.	The web server's private key is used to prove the identity of the server to clients and securely exchange the shared secret key used to encrypt communications between the web server and clients....
V-259144	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must have resource mappings set to disable the serving of certain file types.	Resource mapping is the process of tying a particular file type to a process in the web server that can serve that type of file to a requesting client and to identify which file types are not to...
V-259145	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must have Web Distributed Authoring (WebDAV) disabled.	A web server can be installed with functionality that, by its nature, is not secure. WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP protocol that, when developed, was meant to allow users to create, change,...
V-259142	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must off-load log records onto a different system or media from the system being logged.	Protection of log data includes assuring log data is not accidentally lost or deleted. Backing up log records to an unrelated system or onto separate media than the system the web server is...
V-259143	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must explicitly disable Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) mime mappings based on "Content-Type".	Controlling what a user of a hosted application can access is part of the security posture of the web server. Any time a user can access more functionality than is needed for the operation of the...
V-259140	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must produce log records containing sufficient information to establish what type of events occurred.	Web server logging capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis. Without sufficient and accurate information, a correct replay of the events cannot be determined. Ascertaining the...
V-259141	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service log files must only be accessible by privileged users.	Log data is essential in the investigation of events. If log data were to become compromised, then competent forensic analysis and discovery of the true source of potentially malicious system...
V-259146	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must protect system resources and privileged operations from hosted applications.	Most of the attention to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks focuses on ensuring that systems and applications are not victims of these attacks. However, these systems and applications must also be...
V-259151	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must disable directory listing.	The goal is to completely control the web user's experience in navigating any portion of the web document root directories. Ensuring all web content directories have at least the equivalent of an...
V-259150	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must set the encoding for all text mime types to UTF-8.	Invalid user input occurs when a user inserts data or characters into a hosted application's data entry field and the hosted application is unprepared to process that data. This results in...
V-259153	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must have debug logging disabled.	Information needed by an attacker to begin looking for possible vulnerabilities in a web server includes any information about the web server and plug-ins or modules being used. When debugging or...
V-259152	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must not be configured to use the "mod_status" module.	Any application providing too much information in error logs and in administrative messages to the screen risks compromising the data and security of the application and system. VAMI must only...
V-259155	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must disable client initiated TLS renegotiation.	All versions of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and TLS protocols (up to and including TLS 1.2) are vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack (CVE-2009-3555) during a renegotiation. This...
V-259154	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must enable honoring the SSL cipher order.	During a Transport Layer Security (TLS) session negotiation, when choosing a cipher during a handshake, normally the client's preference is used. This is potentially problematic as a malicious,...
V-259157	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).	HSTS instructs web browsers to only use secure connections for all future requests when communicating with a website. Doing so helps prevent SSL protocol attacks, SSL stripping, cookie hijacking,...
V-259156	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must be configured to hide the server type and version in client responses.	Web servers will often display error messages to client users, displaying enough information to aid in the debugging of the error. The information given back in error messages may display the web...
V-259159	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must protect against MIME sniffing.	MIME sniffing was, and still is, a technique used by some web browsers to examine the content of a particular asset. This is done for the purpose of determining an asset's file format. This...
V-259158	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must implement prevent rendering inside a frame or iframe on another site.	Clickjacking, also known as a “UI redress attack”, is when an attacker uses multiple transparent or opaque layers to trick a user into clicking on a button or link on another page when they were...
V-259139	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must generate information to monitor remote access.	Remote access can be exploited by an attacker to compromise the server. By recording all remote access activities, it will be possible to determine the attacker's location, intent, and degree of...
V-259138	Medium	The vCenter VAMI service must use cryptography to protect the integrity of remote sessions.	Data exchanged between the user and the web server can range from static display data to credentials used to log in the hosted application. Even when data appears to be static, the nondisplayed...