ASSESSING THE VULNERABILITIES AND IMPACTS OF OPEN SSH PORTS ON CENTOS 9 VIRTUAL MACHINES HOSTED ON MAC ARM COMPUTERS CVE-2023-25136

Abstract

In today’s world where the technology is growing so fast and rapidly, there is a need of cybersecurity professionals in every field. The more data you have the more crucial it is to make it secure, in this research paper we dive into the vulnerability of SSH (Secure Shell Protocol) in CentOS 9 Stream which is by default open when installed on Parallels Desktop in Apple Mac Air M1 (Silicon chip & Intel), as on research we get to know that the companies like HCL Technologies, Wipro, Fujitsu and so many others are using Parallels Desktop now days for running Virtual Operating Systems, on testing different Virtual Operating system and finding basic vulnerabilities we came across an operating system which was behaving differently when installed on Windows Virtual Box and when installed on Parallels Desktop on Mac Air M1, on further testing we were able to find that on Windows Virtual Box the RHEL based Linux operating system CentOS when was installed was having SSH (Secure Shell) port closed but when installed on Parallels Desktop on Mac, the port was opened by default and was easily accessible with another machine by SSH command (Secure Shell). The research is based on understanding the ARM based operating system and why these operating system doesn’t allow many Linux based operating system to get installed on mac. As mentioned, that big companies are using Parallels Desktop now a days, we understand and studied how ARM architecture works as for a beginner and would also discuss how the configuration file when downloaded on Parallels Desktop misconfigured by default as compared to when installed on Windows Virtual Box. In this paper we will discuss about the CVE-2023-25136 which was being public in February 2023 as well.

Keywords: SSH Vulnerabilities, CentOS 9, Mac M1, Virtual Machines, Cybersecurity, Network Security, Open SSH Ports, Vulnerability Assessment

Classification numbers: 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.6.3, 4.6.4