pot-insecure.dita

Last change on this file was 99797, checked in by vboxsync, 21 months ago
Docs: bugref:10302. Merging changes from the docs team. Almost exclusively conkeyref related stuff.
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1	<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
2	<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
3	<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="pot-insecure">
4	<title>Potentially Insecure Operations</title>
5
6	<body>
7	<p>
8	The following features of <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> can present security
9	problems:
10	</p>
11	<ul>
12	<li>
13	<p>
14	Enabling 3D graphics using the Guest Additions exposes the
15	host to additional security risks. See
16	<xref href="guestadd-3d.dita">Hardware 3D Acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)</xref>.
17	</p>
18	</li>
19	<li>
20	<p>
21	When teleporting a machine, the data stream through which
22	the machine's memory contents are transferred from one host
23	to another is not encrypted. A third party with access to
24	the network through which the data is transferred could
25	therefore intercept that data. An SSH tunnel could be used
26	to secure the connection between the two hosts. But when
27	considering teleporting a VM over an untrusted network the
28	first question to answer is how both VMs can securely access
29	the same virtual disk image with a reasonable performance.
30	</p>
31	<p>
32	If the network is not sufficiently trusted, the password
33	should be changed for each teleportation as a third party
34	could detect the unecrypted password hash when it is
35	transferred between the target and source host machines.
36	</p>
37	</li>
38	<li>
39	<p>
40	When <xref href="guestadd-pagefusion.dita">Page Fusion</xref>,
41	is enabled, it is possible that a side-channel opens up that
42	enables a malicious guest to determine the address space of
43	another VM running on the same host layout. For example,
44	where DLLs are typically loaded. This information leak in
45	itself is harmless, however the malicious guest may use it
46	to optimize attack against that VM through unrelated attack
47	vectors. It is recommended to only enable Page Fusion if you
48	do not think this is a concern in your setup.
49	</p>
50	</li>
51	<li>
52	<p>
53	When using the <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> web service to control an
54	<ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> host remotely, connections to the web
55	service, over which the API calls are transferred using SOAP
56	XML, are not encrypted. They use plain HTTP by default. This
57	is a potential security risk. For details about the web
58	service, see <xref href="VirtualBoxAPI.dita#VirtualBoxAPI"/>.
59	</p>
60	<p>
61	The web services are not started by default. See
62	<xref href="vboxwebsrv-daemon.dita#vboxwebsrv-daemon"/> to find out how to start
63	this service and how to enable SSL/TLS support. It has to be
64	started as a regular user and only the VMs of that user can
65	be controlled. By default, the service binds to localhost
66	preventing any remote connection.
67	</p>
68	</li>
69	<li>
70	<p>
71	Traffic sent over a UDP Tunnel network attachment is not
72	encrypted. You can either encrypt it on the host network
73	level, with IPsec, or use encrypted protocols in the guest
74	network, such as SSH. The security properties are similar to
75	bridged Ethernet.
76	</p>
77	</li>
78	<li>
79	<p>
80	Because of shortcomings in older Windows versions, using
81	<ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> on Windows versions older than Vista with
82	Service Pack 1 is not recommended.
83	</p>
84	</li>
85	</ul>
86	</body>
87
88	</topic>

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