Operating Systems and Virtual Machines Security

Eng. Hector M Lugo-Cordero, MS CIS 4361 Secure OS Admin

Problem
Client / Server infrastructure very common among most organizations
Clients provide access to system Servers run the systems

Software vulnerabilities (e.g. buffer overflow) and malware need to be considered Follow a framework detailed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) to provide a secure environment, even when we know it is not there

NIST Approach Phases

Planning Installation Configuration Update Maintenance Consider the OS layered model, each layer needs to be properly secured, and it may be attack from layers bellow

OS Layered Model
User Space Services / Hypervisor

System Calls Device Drivers / Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

Kernel / BIOS Instruction Set Architecture Hardware Physical World

Australian Defense Signals Directorate (DSD)

Publish on Top 35 Mitigation Strategies
70% of intrusion studied by 2009 could be prevented with 4 measures
Patch operating systems and applications using auto-update Patch 3rd party applications Restrict admin privileges to users who need them
Disable root on linux (only via sudoers groups users may gain root privileges) Create other accounts (other than default) in Windows with less privileges

White-list approved applications

Overall Goal
Asses risks and plan the system development Secure the underlying OS and then key applications Ensure any critical content is secured Ensure appropriate network protection mechanisms are used Ensure appropriate process are used to maintain security (policies)

System Security Planning

There is a course CIS4313 that talks about planning, here we care more about the RMM (Risk Management Mitigation) Identify risks, along with their likelihood and what are there impact Also identify how to prevent and mitigates these risks Such process will drive what you need for establishing a secure system (personnel for installing, OS, hardware, apps, etc.)

Things to keep in mind

Purpose of the system, type of information stored, applications and services provided Users of the system and their privileges How are users authenticated How information on system is managed What other hosts / DBs are accessed by system Who will manage system and how (remote or local) Additional measures such as: firewall, anti-virus, logging

Hardening the OS
Default OS configurations are for ease of use Measures have to be done at all stages
Installing and patching Configuring
Remove unnecessary applications, services and protocols Users, groups, controls and privileges

Install additional software (anti-virus, firewall, intrusion detection system, etc.) Test Security

Installing and Patching

Installation
Machines should not connect to network until secured
However removable media may be infected as well

Limited network (firewall) is acceptable, ideally:

No inbound connections Only out to certain key sites

Install only required services and drivers (from trusted sources) Set up automatic updates (only if update time is not an issue)

Booting
Protect BIOS changes with password Disable some bootable media Cryptographic hard drives? Pros and Cons

Automatic Updates

Remove Unnecessary Support

Software have vulnerabilities, hence more software = more vulnerabilities Better to not install it at all
Uninstallers sometimes fail to clean all dependency Disabled software may be enabled by an attacker upon control acquisition

Disabling can be done via msconfig command (Windows), yast or equivalent (Linux) or Control Panel (Windows / Linux)

Configure U/G Authentication

Define user types and privileges
Admin (ideally only temporary) Normal Limited

Authentication
Force default password change Password definition Password lifespan

Remove or disable old accounts Allow for remote connections?

Additional Security and Testing

Anti-virus Firewalls, IDS, IPS White list
If attackers manage to install a program what will happen?

Run some test cases which attempt to break security (stress testing), good hackers make a lot of money here

Security Testing

Application Security
Configure applications properly Use encryption when possible as seen earlier
For storing For transmit (SSH connections)

Limit privileges as with users

Remember what we have said about security in Android, Blackberry, and iPhone

Applications may provide backdoors if not configured properly

Maintenance
Now that system is set, keep it secure This involves
Monitoring and analyzing logging information Performing regular backups Recovering from security compromises Regular testing of security Patch, update, and revise critical software

Logging
Keep a record of important events in the computer Problems
Need to make sure to have enough space Manual analysis is hard, so these logs should contain a format such that a program (e.g. in Perl) can parse messages

Data Backup
Backup is the act of creating copies of information such that it may be recovered Archive is to keep these backups for a long period of time in order to meet some legal aspects Should the backup be kept online or offline?
Online makes easier access, faster recover Offline is more secure, harder to recover Why not both?: Users should keep their own offline backups, in case online backup gets removed

Data may be lost accidentally (hardware failures, human mistake) or intentionally

Backups

Linux / Unix Security Periodic Runs

Patch Management
Configure packet manager (cmd) on cron with crontab e (can be used for updates) Debian, Ubuntu: apt-get Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS: up2date SuSE: yast Mac OS X: ports

Crontab usage
-e Edit or create crontab file -l Display your crontab file -r Remove your crontab file

Linux / Unix Security Configuration

Applications and Services configuration
Global configuration may be found at /etc or in program tree Local configurations inside of ~/.<dir>
~ is an alias for $HOME, which is user home directory, equivalent to C:\Users\<username> Typically located in /home/<username>/.<dir>

Advantage
Can have a program (e.g. Perl) that calculates hashes for configuration files and verify its integrity later

Linux / Unix Security Permissions

Users/Groups permissions
Permissions are not only to files but to process (/proc), memory (/dev), boot (/boot), etc. chmod: change file mode
chmod +x jpegconv or chmod a+x jpegconv chmod g+w jpegconv chmod o-x jpegconv chmod u+rwx jpegconv chmod c 777 jpegcong
rwx rwx rwx (groups of tree bits) Each octal represents a group, bit 1 means grant right, bit 0 means remove/reject right

Commands

getfacl/setfacl: get/set file access control list chown: changes file owner chgrp: changes file group groups <username>: shows a list of groups to which username or current belong to, equivalent to cat /etc/groups | grep <username> There are other commands which start with ch and help with other things, use auto-complete feature (tab) for a complete list setfacl -m u:lisa:r file

Access Control List (more on man setfacl)

Linux / Unix Access Control Lists

[d[efault]:] [u[ser]:]uid [:perms]
Permissions of a named user. Permissions of the file owner if uid is empty.

[d[efault]:] g[roup]:gid [:perms]

Permissions of a named group. Permissions of the owning group if gid is empty.

[d[efault]:] m[ask][:] [:perms]

Effective rights mask

[d[efault]:] o[ther][:] [:perms]

Permissions of others.

Linux / Unix Security Remote Access

Configure firewalls to prevent remote access Commands:
/etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files iptables
Filter by protocol Filter by source/destination Filter by rule (i.e. in, out, forward)

For consistency should log into /dev/log

openlog() syslog() closelog() logger command lsof: list open files
lsof | egrep log ps -efawww | egrep syslog

chroot jail: set temporary a new root directory such that services if they get hijacked do not give access to all the system (system call: chroot)

Linux / Unix Security Testing

Nessus: security scanning and vulnerability testing (like a fuzzer) Tripwire: builds and check integrity of files (md5 compares) Nmap: can check for surrounding network services

Windows Security
Use automatic updates specially for
Windows Adobe Acrobat Reader and Flash Plugin Java

Users are defined with a Security ID (SID) and information such as passwords may be stored at Security Account Manager (SAM) System restore User Account Control to treat users with admin only as admin when required, otherwise as normal (Vista and later)

Windows Registry
Hard to maintain Easy to access May use a specific application hiding complex information from administrator May use regedit to see everything
Useful to have an application that queues and monitors registry changes, such that they need to get approved before proceeding

Other Windows Security

Anti-virus Anti-spyware Personal firewall Encrypting File Systems
Local Security Policy

BitLocker: full disk encryption with AES More on Control Panel System Security Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
Checks for minimal recommended requirements in a system Its free Shavlik NetChk Limited for legacy

Virtualization
Virtualization: defines an isomorphism that maps a virtual guest system to a physical host Adds another degree of freedom by enabling multiple resource managers and controlled sharing.
Adds a level of indirection

Can virtualize a single resource (DRAM, Disks) or an entire system (machine).

may create one or more virtual objects.

Virtual Machine: Add virtualization layer which transforms the physical machine into the desired virtual architecture.

Virtualization (Some Terms)

Hypervisor/Virtual Machine Monitor: manages physical resource allocation among VMs Application Virtualization: allow an application written for one environment, to run at others
Java .NET

Full Virtualization: allows to run a full OS on a machine

Native Virtualization: runs without a host OS Hosted Virtualization: requires to have an OS running below it

Some Virtual Machines

Oracle VirtualBox Microsoft Virtual PC (formerly Virtual PC) VMware Xen Hypervisor Parallel Desktop (popular on MAC)

History of Virtualization
1960s
1964 - Birth of virtualization with the IBM CP series which was a test bed for the IBM S/360 system. Provided full hardware virtualization with the ability to run 14 OS instances. 1965 IBM begins shipping S/360 systems, the first mass production multi-purpose mainframe. First machine to use virtual memory for infinite storage capacity.

History of Virtualization
1970s
IBM S/370, more of the same

1980s
1987 - Merge/386 becomes available allowing emulation of Intel 8086 instructions on Intel 80286 & 80386 CPUs. Could run any 8086 coded OS but was typical found running Microsoft MS-DOS.

History of Virtualization
1990s
1997 Virtual PC released for Macintosh 1998 VMware released for Windows 1999 Citrix Presentation Server released for Windows

2001
Virtual PC released for Windows VMware Server released (first x86 server VM)

History of Virtualization
2003
Xen Hypervisor released (Open Source x86) MS buys Virtual PC & releases MS Virtual PC 2004

2005
MS releases Virtual Server 2005 (guest machines limited to 32bit, 4GB of RAM, & 1 CPU) Intels VT and AMDs AMD-V hardware virtualization added to Server and Desktop CPUs

History of Virtualization
2006
VMware Server 1.0 released for free MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 released for free MS Virtual PC 2007 released for free MS buys and releases SoftGrid (now called MS AppV) Amazon begins developing the first true Cloud

2007
VMware Server 2.0 released VirtualBox Open Source released Citrix acquires Xen

History of Virtualization
2008
VMware buys Thinstall and releases ThinApp VMware 6.5 released, first DX9 hardware virtualization MS releases Hyper-V for Windows 2008 (guest machines gain 64bit support, 64 GB of RAM, & 4 CPUs) First public Cloud systems come online

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History of Virtualization
2009
MS releases Hyper-V R2 for Windows 2008 R2 (guest machines gain CPU pooling)

2010
MS releases Hyper-V R2 SP1 (guest machines gain RAM pooling and DX9 hardware support) ARM announces A15 with hardware virtualization

Processor Performance
CPU Speeds
1965 - IBM S/360 0.1 MIPS (133,300 IPS) 1972 - IBM S/370 1.0 MIPS (1,000,000 IPS) 2000 - 1 GHz Intel P3 3,000 MIPS (3,000,000,000 IPS) 2009 - Qualcomm Snapdragon A8 2,000 MIPS 2010 - Intel Core i7 4 x 147,600 MIPS 2010 - Qualcomm Snapdragon MP 2 x 2,500 MIPS 2011 - Qualcomm/Samsung/nVidia A9 MP 2 x 5,000 MIPS 2012 ARM Cortex A15 MP 4 x 25,000 MIPS

Uses
Implement multiprogramming: multiple single-user virtual machine instances. IBM System/370 used this approach to provide time-sharing behavior with each VM running a simple single-user OS (Conversational Monitor System or CMS) Multiple single-application VMs: Dedicates a VM for each application program, uses a general purpose OS. Multiple secure environments: VM creates sandbox to isolate environments and security domains. Manage application environment: Install core applications in one VM then create per user VMs for them to load their own apps. Mixed-OS environments: Single hardware platform can support multiple Operating System environments. Legacy applications: Dedicate VMs for legacy applications. Multiplatform applications development: One hardware platform with VMs providing emulation of alternative hardware.

Uses
New system transition: Staged or gradual migration (opposite of legacy support). System software development: For testing or developing new system software in a protected environment. Operating system training: Run OS instance in a VM so parameter or configuration adjustments do not affect rest of system Help desk support: Use VM to replicate user environment Operating system instrumentation: Can monitor hardware access or low level software abstractions Event monitoring: execution traces, machine state dumps and replaying of traces System encapsulation: Check pointing system state and restarting on same or different machine.

Virtualization Security Issues

Guest OS isolation: to have no connection among running OS and the Hypervisor Keep the integrity of the hypervisor Adds layers to the OS security

Virtualization Security Guidelines

Plan the security Secure all elements of full virtualization
OS Hypervisor Virtualized infrastructure

Restrict and protect administrator access

Hypervisor Security
Like OS security
Install from private network, or clean media Configure for automatic updates Disable unused services and hardware Restrict access to hypervisor If there is remote access do it on a separate network (e.g. VLAN, VPN, etc.)

Virtualized Infrastructure Security

Consider monitoring hardware activity Search for VMM which allow to allocate hardware properly, such these activities on the guess OS may be monitored