vSphere UI must disable the shutdown port.

An attacker has at least two reasons to stop a web server. The first is to cause a denial of service, and the second is to put in place changes the attacker made to the web server configuration. If the Tomcat shutdown port feature is enabled, a shutdown signal can be sent to vSphere UI through this port. To ensure availability, the shutdown port must be disabled.

At the command prompt, run the following commands:

# xmllint --format /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml | sed '2 s/xmlns=".*"//g' |  xmllint --xpath '/Server/@port' - 

Expected result:

port="${shutdown.port}"

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

# grep shutdown /etc/vmware/vmware-vmon/svcCfgfiles/vsphere-ui.json|sed -e 's/^[ ]*//' 

Expected result:

"-Dshutdown.port=-1",

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Navigate to and open:

/usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml

Ensure the server port is disabled:

<Server port="${shutdown.port}">

Restart the service with the following command:

# vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui