ESXI-70-000061 - All port groups on standard switches must be configured to reject guest promiscuous mode requests.

Information

When promiscuous mode is enabled for a virtual switch, all virtual machines (VMs) connected to the Portgroup have the potential to read all packets across that network (only the virtual machines connected to that Portgroup).

Promiscuous mode is disabled by default on the ESXi Server, and this is the recommended setting. Promiscuous mode can be set at the vSwitch and/or the Portgroup level. Switch-level settings can be overridden at the Portgroup level.

Solution

From the vSphere Client, go to Hosts and Clusters.

Select the ESXi Host >> Configure >> Networking >> Virtual Switches.

On each standard switch, click the '...' button next to each port group. Click Edit Settings >> Security tab.

Set 'Promiscuous Mode' to 'Reject'.

or

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

Get-VirtualSwitch -Standard | Get-SecurityPolicy | Set-SecurityPolicy -AllowPromiscuous $false
Get-VirtualPortGroup -Standard | Get-SecurityPolicy | Set-SecurityPolicy -AllowPromiscuousInherited $true

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_7-0_Y23M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-256422r886047_rule, STIG-ID|ESXI-70-000061, Vuln-ID|V-256422

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: 9f983d28e3c1508dfea42b495293df1973da0d391448ff55bdd3f379f8175cc3