Arista EOS VM in libvirt environment

To have another type of device in my Openflow lab, I decided to give Arista EOS a try.
First let's get the software needed to build the VM from www.aristanetworks.com/support/download
and download the boot image (aboot-xxx-veos.iso) and the flash drive (eos-xxx-veos.vmdk).
To access the download area, a registration is required, but software can be downloaded without any support contract or license ID (unlike other vendors..).

Libvirt configuration

Creating the VM profile (either via GUI or text editor) is quite straightforward if you consider the following constraints:

Network

Forums recommend at least 4 network interfaces, which should use the e1000 driver. Virtio driver doesn't work (despite the fact that drivers exist and kernel creates the device) and rtl8139 also doesn't work (module not compiled).
First configured interface is the management1-0 interface and the other ones are ethernet1, 2 and 3.
It was a bit confusing to begin with, as the ethernet interfaces can be loaded in different order (e.g. 3rd is the second defined), so it is better to compare the MAC addresses to be sure that interfaces are configured correctly.

Disk

The configuration should have only IDE controller (you have to remove SATA controller or else it won't boot).

The flashdrive image is to be configured as disk and the aboot iso image as DVD or CD drive (raw format).

First the dvd would be booted and it then loads the flashdrive disk, so boot order should have DVD as first.

Memory

Arista recommends using 1GB memory, which works quite well (and as it seems it is all used up):

[admin@vEOS1 ~]$ free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:        991516     951588      39928          0     115064     480736

-/+ buffers/cache:     355788     635728

Swap:            0          0          0

vEOS openflow configuration

Login as admin (there is no password as default )
CLI is very similar to Cisco one, so to perform any configuration you have to enter the config mode.

So lets configure the interface to talk to the controller:

vEOS1(config)>interface ethernet 1
vEOS1(config-if-Et1)>no switchport
vEOS1(config-if-Et1)>ip address 10.0.0.100/24

It's important to note that interface can't be the management interface, which on hardware is normally not part of the switching plane.
Next let's bind the switch to the controller and allow it to use the other interfaces:

vEOS1(config)>openflow
vEOS1(config-openflow)>controller tcp:10.0.0.10:6633
vEOS1(config-openflow)>bind ethernet 2
vEOS1(config-openflow)>bind ethernet 3

And delight on the result of our "hard" work:

vEOS1>show openflow
Description: vEOS1#sh openflow
OpenFlow configuration: Enabled
DPID: 0x000052540021d910
Description: vEOS1
Controllers:
  configured: tcp:10.0.0.10:6633
  connected: tcp:10.0.0.10:6633
  connection count: 1
  keepalive period: 10 sec
Flow table state: Enabled
Flow table profile: full-match
Bind mode: interface
  interfaces: Ethernet2, Ethernet3
IP routing state: Disabled
Shell command execution: Disabled
Total matched: 42 packets

Commemoration of the Day We Fight Back

It looks like security industry (and it's opposition) still didn't learn much from the events in the past.
Most of the security people in the field still tend to watch only the edge or ingress points of their defense perimeters.
Considering the facts that got published about Snowden or Manning case, only some are considering the internal attack vector. Despite all the statistics of it being the most probable case and with major impact, many security experts are avoiding this area.
I understand that it is difficult to get consensus about HR management and internal security measures, but this is the area that still needs some (if not most) attention. And not just from the point of security officer, but also from the management.

So despite all the disclosures about fancy gadgets, suppliers of intelligence agencies invented, HUMINT is still the most probable and valuable source (and attack vector)..
And the suggested countermeasures like encryption or non-standard OS still won't help in keeping things secret if the person working with the data decides to disclose it to unauthorized external party.

PS: As for agencies, instead of spending tax-money on developing and operating mass-surveillance tools (which also need lots of analysts to sift through the data), collecting HUMINT would provide more valuable and specific information about object of interest (and most probably before some incident).

Deploying Openvswitch in Libvirt

In the age of virtualization, there are many solutions that provide centralized VM management. Some of which are very expensive when it comes to licences (VMware), others are too big for smaller deployments (Openstack). Libvirt is a small enough solution that can be managed via CLI, GUI or API.
The configuration of most of VM parameters (cpu, memory, storage,..) is quite straightforward, but network part might be a bit more difficult.
In order to have something much cooler than just NATed virtual interfaces (it is default), I've decided to build an Openflow based network with Openvswitch (vBridge1 and 2) on each host (see picture below).

As it is of no importance for the first part which controller to use, and I didn't want to spend time configuring flow forwarding rules manually, I've used the OpenvSwitch controller (ovs-controller), in the hub mode by using the -N or the -H command-line option. For the basic connectivity is is more than sufficient and it can be changed later on to a full blown Openflow controller like ODL or POX.

Openvswitch configuration

There are loads of articles and guidelines how to configure Openvswitch, so I'll just summarize the steps taken. Port1 and port2 should be replaced by whichever interface(s) should be used as interconnect interface(s).

Create vbridge on Host A

ovs-vsctl br-create vbridge1
ovs-vsctl br-add vbridge1 port1
ovs-vsctl br-add vbridge1 port2

ovs-vsctl set-controller vbridge1 tcp:hostB:6633

Create vbridge on Host B

ovs-vsctl br-create vbridge2
ovs-vsctl br-add vbridge1 port1
ovs-vsctl br-add vbridge1 port2

ovs-vsctl set-controller vbridge1 tcp:hostB:6633

As the VM network interfaces would be automatically created and attached to the vbridge by libvirt when the VM starts, we can move on the the main part of the configuration.

Libvirt VM profile configuration

All the profiles libvirt uses are stored in /etc/libvirt/qemu (or other if you use different hypervisor).
There is also a possibility to edit them via CLI interface by using virsh edit guest_VM.

Usual template or profile generated by a GUI interface that defines a network card looks like this:

    <interface type='network'>

      <mac address='00:00:00:00:00:00'/>
      <source network='default'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/
    </interface>

In order to use Openvswitch instead the part above has to be modified as follows:

    <interface type='bridge'>
      <source bridge='vbridge'/>
      <virtualport type='openvswitch'/>

      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/
    </interface>

To use it as a VLAN tagged interface, the following line can be added (although it is unnecessary as flows separation would be done by the controller):

      <vlan><tag id='1024'></vlan>

In order to have some kind of system in all the generated interfaces, it is a good idea to distinguish them. The following line would create interface with the name configured:

      <target dev='gentoo-veth0'/>

There are more details on choices available from the libvirt website.

Guest VM configuration

As guests need to recognize the devices that hypervisor offers them (in order to use them),  it is also necessary to provide the drivers for the virtio network device by compiling the appropriate kernel features.

Processor type and features  --->
    [*] Linux guest support --->
        [*] Enable Paravirtualization code
        [*] KVM Guest support (including kvmclock)
Device Drivers  --->
    Virtio drivers  --->
        <*>   PCI driver for virtio devices
    [*] Network device support  --->
        <*>   Virtio network driver

And after rebooting the VM, network interfaces would be available for use.

Setup validation

First lets see if the configured bridges contain the interfaces configured:

ovs-ofctl show vbridge1

The output should list possible actions that the bridge supports and interfaces that are part of it. This would be important when configuring the flows manually.

Now let's see if  the forwarding works. I've configured some IP addresses on the interfaces of each VM as well as on the local interfaces of each vbridge to have some source/destination to ping.

ovs-ofctl dump-flows vbridge1

This command should list two entries (one for sending and one for receiving the packets) after executing the ping.

NXST_FLOW reply (xid=0x4):

 cookie=0x0, duration=3.629s, table=0, n_packets=3, n_bytes=294, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=1, priority=0,icmp,in_port=LOCAL,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=00:10:18:c1:89:94,dl_dst=52:54:00:db:63:44,nw_src=10.0.0.1,nw_dst=10.0.0.11,nw_tos=0,icmp_type=8,icmp_code=0 actions=FLOOD

 cookie=0x0, duration=3.626s, table=0, n_packets=3, n_bytes=294, idle_timeout=60, idle_age=1, priority=0,icmp,in_port=2,vlan_tci=0x0000,dl_src=52:54:00:db:63:44,dl_dst=00:10:18:c1:89:94,nw_src=10.0.0.11,nw_dst=10.0.0.1,nw_tos=0,icmp_type=0,icmp_code=0 actions=FLOOD

As we are using simple HUB controller, the action for the switch is to flood the packets to all ports (except the incoming one), but you can see all the match conditions listed in the flow and actions. The in_port numbers are the ones that are displayed by the first validation command.
The same should be observed on the other host, except the in_port numbers might be different.

There are other commands, which could show the statistics about Openflow tables or status of ports:

ovs-ofctl dump-tables vbridge1
ovs-ofctl dump-ports vbridge1

But the most useful command for debugging a switch or a controller is the monitor command:

ovs-ofctl monitor vbridge1 watch:

This command displays events that are coming to the bridge or are being sent to the controller. So whenever the VM decides to talk, or something wants to talk to the VM, this command would show it.
There are many options to filter the list of events that are displayed in real-time, but for small deployment like this one, the command above is good enough.