Foglight 5.9.7 - Security and Compliance Guide

The root account is not used to run any services. Users cannot log in as root. The appliance’s root password is not shared with customers. The password is restricted to authorized personnel on the appliance development team. The secret root password is changed with every major release.

An internal foglight account is used by the appliances to run services. There is no external access to the account, that is, no one can log in to an appliance using the foglight account.

User authentication on appliances

Appliances control access to the Console Program using a dedicated user authentication mechanism, which is separate from the one described under Security features in Foglight . The user authentication mechanism is built on the Linux® Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). Account passwords are stored in encrypted form in Linux system files.


	NOTE: Appliances cannot use the LDAP-compatible directory services that are supported for the browser interface.

In addition to the root and foglight accounts described under No root access, the appliances ship with a default user account called setup.

The person configuring the appliances initially uses the default setup account to run the setup menu facility (hereafter called the Console Program) on an appliance. This text-mode application is the setup user’s shell, and the user is logged out when this shell is exited. The Console Program uses Yast to configure network cards and has menus to configure and start/stop Foglight® services. The setup account does not have read access to any directory where Foglight stores sensitive customer data. The setup user can create additional user accounts as necessary.


	NOTE: To adhere to security best practises, the setup account either needs to be updated with a new password or deleted after a new user account is created.

Secure remote access

An authorized user can access an appliance remotely using one of the following secure methods: Remote Access Controller (DRAC) or SSH.

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To use DRAC, the appliance’s DRAC port needs to be connected to the public switch.

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To use SSH, the user’s account on the appliance needs to be configured to enable SSH. By default, the setup account and all new accounts have SSH disabled. If SSH is enabled, the user account requires a strong password, which must contain at least the following elements:

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an upper case letter

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a lower case letter

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a numeric character

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one character that is not alphanumeric

For instructions, see the Foglight APM Installation and Setup Guide.

Restricted network ports for appliances

Table 2. Ports supporting communications among appliances and access to the Foglight® Management Server.
Port Number	Software Component	Purpose	Direction of Communication
7611 and 7612	All appliances	Communicate with other appliances	Management Server —> Sniffer or Archiver
7621 and 7622	Archiver	Communicate with other appliances	Management Server —> Archiver
7623	Relayer	Transmit capture data from Sniffers to Archivers	Sniffer —> Relayer —> Archiver
7602	Management Server	Communicate with other appliances	Archiver or Sniffer —> Management Server
8080	Management Server	Run the Foglight browser interface	Client —> Management Server
8443	Management Server	Run the browser interface over a secure connection (HTTPS)	Client —> Management Server
22	All appliances	Enable remote access using SSH	Client —> Appliance

Other open ports

The following TCP ports are left open to detect port-scanning programs: 1, 11, 110, and 143. For more information, see Layer 2: Port scan detection and blocking tool. When time synchronization with a time server using NTP is enabled, UDP port 123 is open.

Run the browser interface over a secure connection (HTTPS)

To use port 8443 instead of 8080, set the Management Server’s httpsonly option to true. When the Management Server is hosted on an appliance, the setting is located in the appliance.config file, which you can access from the command line.

To enable HTTPS on an appliance:

Log into the Console Program.

Select Advanced Options.

Select Access Shell.

Type: vi /opt/quest/foglight/config.appliance/appliance.config

Enable the following code by removing the leading hash symbol (#):
server.console.httpsonly = "true";

Save the change and exit vi by pressing Esc and then typing :wq

Type: rcfoglight restart

Enable remote access using SSH

To enable remote access using SSH, open port 22 for individual Console Program user accounts.


	TIP: When a remote troubleshooting session is required, enable SSH for the user account that will be assigned to the troubleshooter. As soon as the troubleshooting session ends, disable SSH access for this account.

To enable SSH for an existing user:

Log into the Console Program.

Select Console User Accounts.

Select Modify Console User.

Select the target user account.

Select Enable/Disable SSH.

If the account does not use a strong password, follow the prompts to change the password.