ESXI-06-000060 - The virtual switch MAC Address Change policy must be set to reject.

Information

If the virtual machine operating system changes the MAC address, it can send frames with an impersonated source MAC address at any time. This allows it to stage malicious attacks on the devices in a network by impersonating a network adaptor authorized by the receiving network. This will prevent VMs from changing their effective MAC address. It will affect applications that require this functionality. This will also affect how a layer 2 bridge will operate. This will also affect applications that require a specific MAC address for licensing. Reject MAC Changes can be set at the vSwitch and/or the Portgroup level. You can override switch level settings at the Portgroup level.

Solution

From the vSphere Client go to Configuration >> Networking >> vSphere Standard Switch. For each virtual switch go to properties and change 'MAC Address Changes' to reject for the switch and each port group.

or

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

Get-VirtualSwitch | Get-SecurityPolicy | Set-SecurityPolicy -MacChanges $false
Get-VirtualPortGroup | Get-SecurityPolicy | Set-SecurityPolicy -MacChangesInherited $true

See Also

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

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000366, Group-ID|V-63289, Rule-ID|SV-77779r1_rule, STIG-ID|ESXI-06-000060, Vuln-ID|V-63289

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: 3cea2660c89f421b729307b63c9f4f28e7bdb34e1b48c610610e1dbd5da67abe