Details

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. By gaining access to the private key, an attacker can pretend to be an authorized server and decrypt the SSL traffic between a client and the web server.

vSphere Client pulls the machine certificate from the VECS keystore and stores it in keystore.jks so Tomcat can access it. The minimum permissions and ownership on the keystore are set by default but must be verified.

Solution

At the command prompt, execute the following command:

# chmod 640 /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/keystore.jks
# chown vsphere-client:users /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/keystore.jks

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_6-7_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 Unix.

References

• 800-53|IA-5(2)(b)
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000186
• CSCv6|3.1
• Rule-ID|SV-239759r679504_rule
• STIG-ID|VCFL-67-000018
• Vuln-ID|V-239759

Source

• Tenable.com/audits