Interactive Serial Console Support Not Disabled

ID: gcloud-vm-serial-console-enabled

Severity: medium

Author: princechaddha

Tags: cloud,devops,gcp,gcloud,compute,security,serial-console,gcp-cloud-config

Description

Ensure that “Enable connecting to serial ports” configuration setting is disabled for all your production Google Compute Engine instances. The interactive serial console does not support IP-based access restrictions such as IP address whitelists. If enabled, clients can attempt to connect to your instance from any IP address if they know the username, SSH key, project ID, instance name and zone.

YAML Source

id: gcloud-vm-serial-console-enabled

info:
  name: Interactive Serial Console Support Not Disabled
  author: princechaddha
  severity: medium
  description: |
    Ensure that "Enable connecting to serial ports" configuration setting is disabled for all your production Google Compute Engine instances. The interactive serial console does not support IP-based access restrictions such as IP address whitelists. If enabled, clients can attempt to connect to your instance from any IP address if they know the username, SSH key, project ID, instance name and zone.
  impact: |
    With interactive serial console enabled, instances are accessible from any IP address without IP-based restrictions, potentially allowing unauthorized access if credentials are compromised.
  remediation: |
    Disable interactive serial console support by setting the "serial-port-enable" metadata key to "false" for your VM instances to prevent unauthorized access through serial ports.
  reference:
    - https://www.trendmicro.com/cloudoneconformity/knowledge-base/gcp/ComputeEngine/disable-interactive-serial-console-support.html
    - https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/interacting-with-serial-console
  tags: cloud,devops,gcp,gcloud,compute,security,serial-console,gcp-cloud-config

flow: |
  code(1)
  for(let projectId of iterate(template.projectIds)){
    set("projectId", projectId)
    code(2)
    for(let instance of iterate(template.instances)){
      instance = JSON.parse(instance)
      set("instanceName", instance.name)
      set("zone", instance.zone)
      code(3)
    }
  }

self-contained: true

code:
  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud projects list --format="json(projectId)"

    extractors:
      - type: json
        name: projectIds
        internal: true
        json:
          - '.[].projectId'

  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud compute instances list --project $projectId --format="json(name,zone.basename())"

    extractors:
      - type: json
        name: instances
        internal: true
        json:
          - '.[]'

  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud compute instances describe $instanceName --zone $zone --project $projectId --format="json(metadata.items)"

    matchers:
      - type: word
        words:
          - '"key": "serial-port-enable"'
          - '"value": "true"'
        condition: and

    extractors:
      - type: dsl
        dsl:
          - '"VM instance " + instanceName + " in zone " + zone + " of project " + projectId + " has interactive serial console support enabled"'
# digest: 4b0a00483046022100e9419a3b3eb34b0993182ba41d9f102dc5dc71deac6da1ca0fbacb8452f36d76022100a1ba187dfcc9ee232c5449dc426408f947d4f4c6413d9aa429dd990a2df65649:922c64590222798bb761d5b6d8e72950

Guide to check the vulnerabilities

This template is used to detect vulnerabilities in web applications. It can be used with the Nuclei tool to scan for specific patterns or behaviors.

$ nuclei -u "URL" -t "cloud/gcp/compute/gcloud-vm-serial-console-enabled.yaml"

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