Enterprise File Fabric Hardening Advisory

Although Storage Made Easy takes extensive measures to ensure that the Enterprise File Fabric (EFF) conforms to best practices for information security, from time to time we identify changes that can be made to deployed EFF VMs to further harden them. This advisory presents our latest hardening recommendations. We strongly recommend that EFF administrators read this advisory carefully and implement the recommended changes as appropriate for their sites.

TLS versions and cipher recommendations change as new threats are discovered. Some scanning tools will flag the availability of older ciphers and protocol versions in the EFF as minor vulnerabilities. Should you wish to address those, here is how to update the File Fabric's configuration with the latest recommended settings.

We recommend that you use Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator to generate the list of ciphers. When using the Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator please select Apache server and Modern profile.

As the root user edit the following file with the vi or nano editor after making a backup copy:

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf

Find and replace the following line (note that it may line-wrap and appear to be several lines):

SSLCipherSuite ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:DH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+AES:RSA+AESGCM:RSA+AES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS:!RSA

with (for example; always get the latest cipher list from Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator):

SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256

Additionally replace the line:

SSLProtocol all -SSLv3 -TLSv1

with:

SSLProtocol all -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1

After saving the file restart apache:

systemctl restart httpd

You can also restrict the ciphers when connecting for administration using ssh.

As the root user edit the following file with the vi or nano editor after making a backup copy:

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find and replace the following line:

Ciphers aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,aes128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc

with these 3 lines:

KexAlgorithms curve25519-sha256@libssh.org,ecdh-sha2-nistp521,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256

Ciphers chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com,aes256-gcm@openssh.com,aes128-gcm@openssh.com,aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr

MACs hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com,umac-128-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256,umac-128@openssh.com

After saving the file restart the sshd service as root:

systemctl restart sshd

The EFF provides legacy protocol adaptors that allow you to use FTP, FTPS or SFTP to access any storage that is connected to the EFF. These protocols are presented by the EFF's CloudFTP service.

To provide compatibility with a wide range of clients, SFTP and FTPS support many encryption protocols and ciphers including some that are known to be relatively insecure, and the FTP protocol does not support encryption. Unless you have a specific need for FTP, FTPS or SFTP access to your EFF, you may choose to disable CloudFTP service. Here is how to do that.

As root:

systemctl stop cloudftp 
systemctl disable cloudftp

The EFF's Apache Web server configuration allows access to a directory containing icons. Although this is not a security risk, some scanning tools will flag it as one. Here is how to remove access to that directory.

As root remove the following file:

rm /etc/httpd/conf.d/autoindex.conf
systemctl restart httpd