Details

When adding ESXi hosts to Active Directory, if the group ‘ESX Admins’ exists, all user/group accounts assigned to the group will have full administrative access to the host. Discretion should be used when managing membership to the ‘ESX Admins’ group.

Solution

From the vSphere Client, select the ESXi Host and go to Configuration >> Advanced Settings.

Select the ‘Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroup’ value.

Configure it to an Active Directory group other than ‘ESX Admins’.

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the ESXi host run the following commands:

Get-VMHost | Get-AdvancedSetting -Name Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroup | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMware_vSphere_6-0_ESXi_V1R5_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Identification and Authentication.This control applies to the following type of system VMware.

References

• 800-53|IA-2
• CAT|III
• CCI|CCI-000764
• Group-ID|V-63247
• Rule-ID|SV-77737r2_rule
• STIG-ID|ESXI-06-000039
• Vuln-ID|V-63247

Source

• Tenable.com/audits