Host Vulnerability Management - Configuration & Workflows

Getting Started with Host Vulnerability Management

Before getting started with Host Vulnerability Management (HVM) you will need to have the following:

• An InsightCloudSec installation (v. 23.2.28) (SaaS-Only)
• The AWS, Azure, and/or GCP permissions outlined below

AWS

HVM User Policy

The AWS HVM User Policy can be obtained from our public S3 bucket and used to create a custom policy within AWS that contains all the permissions necessary for HVM configuration and assessment. Review the AWS IAM documentation for more information.

Azure

In the table below are the minimum required permissions for your InsightCloudSec Azure role (this should already exist as part of Azure - Onboarding).

HVM User Role

The Azure HVM User Role below can be copied and used to create a custom role within Azure that contains all the permissions necessary for HVM configuration and assessment. Ensure you replace the placeholder Subscription ID value.

json
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{
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    "properties": {
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        "roleName": "Disk Access for Host Vulnerability Assessment",
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        "description": "Read Disk Properties, Revoke and Generate SAS URLs, Create and Delete Snapshots",
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        "assignableScopes": [
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            "/subscriptions/<subscription-id>"
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        ],
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        "permissions": [
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            {
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                "actions": [
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/read",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/write",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/delete",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/beginGetAccess/action",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/snapshots/endGetAccess/action",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/disks/read",
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                    "Microsoft.Compute/disks/beginGetAccess/action"
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                ],
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                "notActions": [],
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                "dataActions": [],
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                "notDataActions": []
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            }
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        ]
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    }
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}
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Limitations

Azure HVM support is limited by the following:

• The current Implementation doesn’t support VMWare vSphere VMs or Azure Classic VMs
  • Note: Azure Classic VMs are EOL in September 2023
• Doesn’t support disks with data access authentication mode enabled

GCP

In the table below are most of the minimum required permissions for your InsightCloudSec service account (this should already exist as part of GCP - Onboarding).

To enable the full scope of the feature, we also require a couple delete permissions:

For customers concerned about giving InsightCloudSec permissions to delete snapshots or cloud storage objects, we highly recommend creating a separate role containing only the delete permissions (see table above) and applying IAM conditions to the role to restrict what objects/snapshots can be deleted:

• For storage objects, the deletion permission can be restricted to only the export bucket used by InsightCloudSec for storing exported snapshots by using a startsWith condition as follows: resource.name.startsWith(projects/_/buckets/r7-cloudsec-hva-snapshots)
• For snapshots, since the resource name is composed of different attributes, we need to extract the snapshot name from the resource name before matching on it. GCP allows you to extract parts of a resource name as follows: resource.name.extract("snapshots/{end}").startsWith("rapid7")

Here's a JSON condition block that you can copy/paste for convenience:

json
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{
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    "expression": "resource.name.startsWith(\"projects/_/buckets/r7-cloudsec-hva-snapshots\") || resource.name.extract(\"snapshots/{end}\").startsWith(\"rapid7\")",
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    "title": "Rapid7 cleanup condition",
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    "description": ""
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}

Full resource name formats for GCP can be found here.

Cloud Build Service Account

GCP's method of snapshot export uses a Cloud Build job, which runs under a Service Account like most GCP services. To do this successfully, GCP must have the Cloud Build API enabled and the service account must also have the following permissions. Once the Cloud Build API is enabled, the service account is created automatically and is separate from your normal InsightCloudSec harvesting service account.

The Compute Admin (roles/compute.admin) and Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser) built-in roles already have these permissions.

• compute.disks.create
• compute.disks.delete
• compute.disks.get
• compute.disks.list
• compute.disks.setLabels
• compute.disks.use
• compute.disks.useReadOnly
• compute.instances.create
• compute.instances.delete
• compute.instances.get
• compute.instances.getSerialPortOutput
• compute.instances.list
• compute.instances.setLabels
• compute.instances.setMetadata
• compute.instances.setServiceAccount
• compute.machineTypes.list
• compute.networks.get
• compute.networks.list
• compute.projects.get
• compute.snapshots.list
• compute.snapshots.useReadOnly
• compute.subnetworks.use
• compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp
• compute.zoneOperations.get
• compute.zones.list
• iam.serviceAccounts.actAs
• iam.serviceAccounts.get
• iam.serviceAccounts.list
• resourcemanager.projects.get

Limitations

GCP HVM support is limited by the following:

• Cannot assess instances with disks encrypted by a Customer Supplied Encryption Key
• Cannot assess Local SSDs

Configuring HVM Assessments

Before hosts can be regularly assessed for vulnerabilities, you must enable the HVM feature and properly scope the hosts that should be assessed. These configuration settings (and others) can be found on the Vulnerability Settings page, which is accessed from the Vulnerabilities page.

Enabling HVM Assessments

1. Login to InsightCloudSec and navigate to the Vulnerabilities page.
2. In the top right corner, click Settings.
3. Click the Enable Host Vulnerability Assessment toggle. The Assessment Scope section appears.

Scoping HVM Assessments

After enabling the feature, you must scope your environment to the hosts that should be assessed. Scoping relies on the Advanced Filtering mechanism seen throughout InsightCloudSec.

Coverage

Once the feature has been enabled and a scope has been applied, InsightCloudSec will begin reporting on the assessment coverage for the scoped cloud accounts. Click the Coverage graph to open the Assessment Coverage window, which shows a detailed report, including progress summary and assessment errors for the InsightCloudSec organization grouped by cloud account.

Additional Settings

These additional settings are for GCP only. By default, the GCP snapshot export job will use the default Compute Engine service account and the default VPC network to run the export. If the defaults are not sufficient, you can configure each of these from the Vulnerability Settings page.

To edit GCP Snapshot Export settings:

1. Login to InsightCloudSec and navigate to the Vulnerabilities page.
2. In the top right corner, click Settings.
3. Next to the relevant GCP cloud account, click Edit.
4. Update the export_network and export_service_account fields as desired.
5. Click Apply.

Downloading Assessment History

Click the Download Assessment History button to download all Host-related assessment history.

Collection & Assessment Workflows

The following workflows gather and store the inventory from the host instances harvested by InsightCloudSec and assess them for vulnerabilities. They also continuously monitor and refresh the inventory and vulnerability data based on changes to the instances and for newly disclosed vulnerabilities.

Collection & Assessment Workflow (New Instance)

As InsightCloudSec harvesting discovers new host instances, HVM triggers the collection step, which creates and downloads a snapshot of the instance from a customer's cloud account to InsightCloudSec. When HVM is initialized, all host instances already harvested are treated as new, triggering the first collection.

The snapshot is then assessed for vulnerabilities in InsightCloudSec and its inventory (versions of the operating system and software packages, OSS dependencies, and other select file types) is saved. InsightCloudSec discards the snapshot once the assessment is complete.

Recollection & Reassessment Workflow (Existing Instance)

Host instances are reassessed and potentially recollected based on the following triggers.

• Automated recollection - a proprietary algorithm determines the need to collect a new snapshot using environmental events indicating the instance changed since the last collection

• Automated reassessment - when new vulnerabilities are reported, InsightCloudSec reviews the host instance inventory and reassesses those with the imaged packages.

• Manual recollection and reassessment - you can trigger a recollection and reassessment of a specific host instance using an action in the InsightCloudSec console or an API call

Workflow Diagram (Trigger-Based Collection & Assessment)

Triggering a collection starts the snapshot and is immediately followed by an assessment. This process can be tracked on the Host Assessment progress page.

• The timing to complete the process depends on the size of the image and can take from 5 minutes to 20 minutes.
• Once the Assessment is complete, results are immediately available.