Software Secure Workload
Activity Configure

Security considerations

The Ingest Virtual Machine for ERSPAN guest Operating System is CentOS 7.9, from which OpenSSL server/clients packages were removed.


 

CentOS 7.9 is the guest operating system for Ingest and Edge virtual appliances in Secure Workload 3.8.1.19 and earlier releases. Starting Secure Workload 3.8.1.36, the operating system is AlmaLinux 9.2.

Once the VM is booted and the SPAN agent containers are deployed (this takes a couple of minutes on first time boot only), no network interfaces, besides the loopback, will be present in the Virtual Machine. Therefore the only way to access the appliance is via its console.

The VM network interface are now moved inside the Docker containers. The containers run a centos:7.9.2009 based Docker image with no TCP/UDP port open.


 

Starting Secure Workload 3.8.1.36, the containers run almalinux/9-base:9.2.

Also, the containers are run with the base privileges (no –privileged option) plus the NET_ADMIN capability.

In the unlikely case a container is compromised, the VM guest OS should not be compromisable from inside the container.

All the other security consideration valid for Secure Workload Agents running inside a host do also apply to the Secure Workload SPAN Agents running inside the Docker containers.