VM : disable-vix-messages

Information

Disable VIX messages from the VM.
The VIX API is a library for writing scripts and programs to manipulate virtual machines. If you do not make use of custom VIX programming in your environment, then you should consider disabling certain features to reduce the potential for vulnerabilities. The ability to send messages from the VM to the host is one of these features. Note that disabling this feature does NOT adversely affect the functioning of VIX operations that originate outside the guest, so certain VMware and 3rd party solutions that rely upon this capability should continue to work. This is a deprecated interface. Enabling this setting is for Profile 1 only, to ensure that any deprecated interface is turned off for audit purposes.

Solution

# Add the setting to all VMs -
Get-VM | New-AdvancedSetting -Name "isolation.tools.vixMessage.disable" -value $true

See Also

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/files/xls/vSphere_6_0_Hardening_Guide_GA_15_Jun_2015.xls

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: c968849ea34cd7ae94668e6a31943bdd3702be8df6f1e2ac4b0fabf209e09fbe