VM : disable-disk-shrinking-wiper

Information

Disable virtual disk shrinking.

Shrinking a virtual disk reclaims unused space in it. VMware Tools reclaims all unused portions of disk partitions (such as deleted files) and prepares them for shrinking. Wiping takes place in the guest operating system. If there is empty space in the disk, this process reduces the amount of space the virtual disk occupies on the host drive. Normal users and processes-that is, users and processes without root or administrator privileges-within virtual machines have the capability to invoke this procedure. A non-root user cannot wipe the parts of the virtual disk that require root-level permissions. However, if this is done repeatedly, the virtual disk can become unavailable while this shrinking is being performed, effectively causing a denial of service. In most datacenter environments, disk shrinking is not done, so you should disable this feature. Repeated disk shrinking can make a virtual disk unavailable. Limited capability is available to non-administrative users in the guest.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.security.doc/GUID-9610FE65-3A78-4982-8C28-5B34FEB264B6.html

Solution

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

See Also

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/files/xls/vmware-6-5-update-1-security-configuration-guide.xlsx

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7

Plugin: VMware

Control ID: c9baf67217ed8fe9c153651bf325f1d914581b4b8e2605e2de76cb0e24ce5b10