| 1 | <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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| 3 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="vmencryption-limitations">
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| 4 | <title>Limitations of VM Encryption</title>
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| 5 |
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| 6 | <body>
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| 7 | <p>There are some limitations the user needs to be aware of when using this feature: </p>
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| 8 | <ul>
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| 9 | <li>
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| 10 | <p>Exporting appliances containing an encrypted VM is not possible, because the OVF specification does not
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| 11 | support this. The VM is therefore decrypted during export. </p>
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| 12 | </li>
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| 13 | <li>
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| 14 | <p>The DEK is kept in memory while the VM is running to be able to encrypt and decrypt VM data. While this
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| 15 | should be obvious the user needs to be aware of this because an attacker might be able to extract the key on a
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| 16 | compromised host and decrypt the data. </p>
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| 17 | </li>
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| 18 | <li>
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| 19 | <p>When encrypting or decrypting the VM, the password is passed in clear text using the <ph
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| 20 | conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> API. This needs to be kept in mind, especially when using
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| 21 | third party API clients which make use of the web service where the password might be transmitted over the
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| 22 | network. The use of HTTPS is mandatory in such a case. </p>
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| 23 | </li>
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| 24 | </ul>
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| 25 | </body>
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| 26 |
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| 27 | </topic>
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