Security scanner reports an invalid certificate for ports 9000 and 9040 on the NSX Manager

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• Nessus scanner returns a finding with the description:

  • "The server's X.509 certificate cannot be trusted. This situation can occur in three different ways, in which the chain of trust can be broken, as stated below :

      - First, the top of the certificate chain sent by the server might not be descended from a known public certificate authority. This can occur either when the top of the chain is an unrecognized, self-signed certificate, or when intermediate certificates are missing that would connect the top of the certificate chain to a known public certificate authority.

      - Second, the certificate chain may contain a certificate that is not valid at the time of the scan. This can occur either when the scan occurs before one of the certificate's 'notBefore' dates, or after one of the certificate's 'notAfter' dates.

      - Third, the certificate chain may contain a signature that either didn't match the certificate's information or could not be verified. Bad signatures can be fixed by getting the certificate with the bad signature to be re-signed by its issuer. Signatures that could not be verified are the result of the certificate's issuer using a signing algorithm that Nessus either does not     support or does not recognize.

    If the remote host is a public host in production, any break in the chain makes it more difficult for users to verify the authenticity and identity of the web server. This could make it easier to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks against the remote host."

• The finding synopsis is "The SSL certificate for this service cannot be trusted."
• Self-signed certificates are used for the ports reported by the scanner.

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

The security scanner is checking to ensure the SSL certificates found meet pre-defined requirements.  Self-signed certificates can trigger this alarm.

Resolution

Replace the NSX CBM_Corfu certificate associated with ports 9000 and 9040 with a certificate that meets the scanner expectations.  

 

Additional Information

For NSX 4.2 the instruction to replace certificates can be found at Replace Certificates Through NSX Manager

Additional port information for NSX can be found at NSX - VMware Ports and Protocols