Azure Introduction
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Azure Threats
VM Scale Sets Should Be Integrated With Load Balancers
More Info:
Ensure that each Microsoft Azure virtual machine scale set is integrated with a load balancer in order to distribute incoming traffic among healthy virtual machine instances running within the scale set. Azure load balancer is a layer 4 load balancer that provides low latency, high throughput, and scales up to millions of flows for all TCP and UDP web applications.
Risk Level
Medium
Address
Security
Compliance Standards
CBP
Triage and Remediation
Remediation
To remediate the misconfiguration of VM Scale Sets not being integrated with Load Balancers in AZURE, follow the below steps:
- Login to the AZURE portal (https://portal.azure.com/).
- Navigate to the “Virtual machine scale sets” option in the left-hand menu.
- Select the VM scale set that you want to integrate with a load balancer.
- Click on the “Networking” option under the “Settings” section.
- In the “Networking” section, click on the “Add inbound NAT rule” option.
- In the “Add inbound NAT rule” window, select the “Load balancer” option.
- Select the load balancer that you want to integrate with the VM scale set.
- Select the backend port and protocol for the VM instances.
- Select the frontend IP configuration for the load balancer.
- Click on the “Add” button to save the changes.
After following these steps, the VM scale set will be integrated with the selected load balancer.
To remediate the misconfiguration of VM Scale Sets not being integrated with Load Balancers in AZURE, you can follow the below steps using AZURE CLI:
-
First, you need to create a Load Balancer using the following command:
az network lb create --name <load_balancer_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --location <location>Replace the
<load_balancer_name>,<resource_group_name>, and<location>placeholders with the appropriate values. -
Next, you need to create a backend pool for the VM Scale Set using the following command:
az network lb address-pool create --name <backend_pool_name> --lb-name <load_balancer_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name>Replace the
<backend_pool_name>,<load_balancer_name>, and<resource_group_name>placeholders with the appropriate values. -
Now, you need to add the VM Scale Set instances to the backend pool using the following command:
az network nic ip-config address-pool add --address-pool <backend_pool_name> --ip-config-name ipconfig1 --nic-name <nic_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name>Replace the
<backend_pool_name>,<nic_name>, and<resource_group_name>placeholders with the appropriate values. -
Finally, you need to configure the VM Scale Set to use the Load Balancer by updating the Load Balancer ID in the VM Scale Set configuration using the following command:
az vmss update --name <vmss_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --set virtualMachineProfile.networkProfile.networkInterfaceConfigurations[0].ipConfigurations[0].loadBalancerBackendAddressPools=[{'id':'/subscriptions/<subscription_id>/resourceGroups/<resource_group_name>/providers/Microsoft.Network/loadBalancers/<load_balancer_name>/backendAddressPools/<backend_pool_name>'}]Replace the
<vmss_name>,<resource_group_name>,<subscription_id>,<load_balancer_name>, and<backend_pool_name>placeholders with the appropriate values.
After following these steps, your VM Scale Set will be integrated with the Load Balancer in AZURE.
To remediate the misconfiguration “VM Scale Sets Should Be Integrated With Load Balancers” for Azure using Python, you can follow the below steps:
Step 1: Import the required modules and authenticate to Azure using the Python SDK.
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential
from azure.mgmt.compute import ComputeManagementClient
from azure.mgmt.network import NetworkManagementClient
credential = AzureCliCredential()
compute_client = ComputeManagementClient(credential, subscription_id)
network_client = NetworkManagementClient(credential, subscription_id)
Step 2: Get the list of VM Scale Sets that are not integrated with Load Balancers.
vmss_list = compute_client.virtual_machine_scale_sets.list()
for vmss in vmss_list:
if vmss.sku.capacity > 0:
lb = network_client.load_balancers.list()
if lb:
for lb in lb:
if lb.backend_address_pools:
for pool in lb.backend_address_pools:
if pool.virtual_machine_scale_set:
if pool.virtual_machine_scale_set.id == vmss.id:
break
else:
network_client.load_balancers.create_or_update(
resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
load_balancer_name=load_balancer_name,
parameters={
"location": location,
"frontend_ip_configurations": [{
"name": frontend_ip_configuration_name,
"public_ip_address": {
"id": public_ip_address_id
}
}],
"backend_address_pools": [{
"name": backend_address_pool_name,
"virtual_machine_scale_set": {
"id": vmss.id
}
}]
}
)
Step 3: If a VM Scale Set is not integrated with a Load Balancer, create a new Load Balancer and integrate it with the VM Scale Set.
network_client.load_balancers.create_or_update(
resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
load_balancer_name=load_balancer_name,
parameters={
"location": location,
"frontend_ip_configurations": [{
"name": frontend_ip_configuration_name,
"public_ip_address": {
"id": public_ip_address_id
}
}],
"backend_address_pools": [{
"name": backend_address_pool_name,
"virtual_machine_scale_set": {
"id": vmss.id
}
}]
}
)
By following these steps, you can remediate the misconfiguration “VM Scale Sets Should Be Integrated With Load Balancers” for Azure using Python.