VMware vSphere™ and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment

Chapter 2. Holistic View from the Bottom Up

To understand how to secure our virtual environment, you must first understand how an attacker sees it. Although this chapter will explain the “mechanics” of the most common attacks, it will not mention any tools specific to these attacks. Many books on the market contain surveys of tools used in this field, and for the sake of nonredundancy we will not give credit to those tools here, although we will provide several references to them in Appendix D, “Suggested Reading and Useful Links.” Just as a mechanic must understand the inner workings of an automobile engine to troubleshoot and find possible fixes to various problems, a Penetration Tester (PenTester) or virtualization security practitioner must ...