The operating system must authenticate devices before establishing remote network connections using bidirectional cryptographically based authentication between devices.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
SRG-OS-000115-ESXI5-PNF	SRG-OS-000115-ESXI5-PNF	SRG-OS-000115-ESXI5-PNF_rule		Medium

Description
Device authentication is a solution enabling an organization to manage devices. It is an additional layer of authentication ensuring only specific pre-authorized devices operated by specific pre-authorized users can access the network. Device authentication requires unique identification and authentication that may be defined by type, by specific device, or by a combination of type and device as deemed appropriate by the organization. Bidirectional authentication provides a means for both connecting parties to mutually authenticate one another and cryptographically based authentication provides a secure means of authenticating without the use of clear text passwords. Permanent not a finding - SSH (disabled by default and unused due to Lockdown Mode requirement) is configured for "Protocol 2". All versions of VMware products, including all releases of vCenter Server use X.509 certificates to encrypt session information sent over SSL (secure sockets layer protocol) connections between server and client components such as ESXi-v5. vCenter communicates/authenticates to ESXi as a non-privileged user and then performs a series of tasks as "root/administrator".

Description

Device authentication is a solution enabling an organization to manage devices. It is an additional layer of authentication ensuring only specific pre-authorized devices operated by specific pre-authorized users can access the network. Device authentication requires unique identification and authentication that may be defined by type, by specific device, or by a combination of type and device as deemed appropriate by the organization. Bidirectional authentication provides a means for both connecting parties to mutually authenticate one another and cryptographically based authentication provides a secure means of authenticating without the use of clear text passwords. Permanent not a finding - SSH (disabled by default and unused due to Lockdown Mode requirement) is configured for "Protocol 2". All versions of VMware products, including all releases of vCenter Server use X.509 certificates to encrypt session information sent over SSL (secure sockets layer protocol) connections between server and client components such as ESXi-v5. vCenter communicates/authenticates to ESXi as a non-privileged user and then performs a series of tasks as "root/administrator".

STIG	Date
VMware ESXi v5 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2013-01-15

Details

Check Text ( C-SRG-OS-000115-ESXI5-PNF_chk )
ESXi supports this requirement and cannot be configured to be out of compliance. This is a permanent not a finding.

Fix Text (F-SRG-OS-000115-ESXI5-PNF_fix)
This requirement is permanent not a finding. No fix is required.