This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

Idea 1: Homelab/small business focused endpoint management

Problem Statement

Small Businesses (and internet hobbyists) are starting to enjoy the benefits of virtualization with platforms like Proxmox, in order to run increasingly complex infrastructure setups with multiple VMs, containers, different operating systems, etc. However, many of them don’t create their infrastructure with easy automation tools like Ansible/Terraform etc, and then because manually updating lots of VMs and containers can be a pain, it might just stop getting done.

Proposed Solution

We want to build a solution to add to existing infrastructure that will monitor for traditional updates / security fixes via the system package manager, scan for deployed services on the host that might need version updates, check common misconfigurations, and maybe send some kind of centralized logging back to the endpoint manager. The overall goal is to provide enough monitoring that it’s unlikely a small business or homelab would get hacked by having outdated software or configuration blunders, without overwhelming the one-person IT team with infinite alert fatigue, as tools like more traditional SIEMs seem to do.

Scope

In terms of achievability within our senior year, we think that we could achieve making an agent that runs commands and reports back to a centralized dashboard which collects information on the systems it’s monitoring, and can bulk dispatch commands to notify the admin for updates, alert if there are urgently concerning log messages or system status, etc. We would probably build the server as an appliance or VM image so that it itself can be auto-updating, and thus not increase the burden on the admin of systems to keep an eye on. We have not yet decided 100% on what features of this platform may be beyond what we could reasonably do within this year.

Matt - speaking for myself, selfishly, I’d like to at least get automatic notifications for VM guests that need apt updates applied, and ideally I’d like the auto-updater to plug into Proxmox and run snapshots on the VMs before applying updates. (My homelab is Proxmox, and 90% of my guests are apt-based) Ideally we’d make the hypervisor integration pluggable, so that our software could be used with any hypervisor, and still retain the ability to roll back if the forced auto-update policy is too aggressive and breaks something.

Architecture

• Project 1 Architecture Notes

Idea 2: Cyber Range with Proxmox for competition practice

Problem Statement:

Repeatable environments for competition training that are minimal work to set up & tear down between events, and that allow sufficient flexibility to ensure the students doing the training sessions have unique challenges each time.

Proposed Solution

Proxmox + Terraform + helper scripts to generate and apply VM configurations, Proxmox credentials/permissions, virtual networking, etc.

Scope

We’re already in the beginning stages of this for ChampSec (Competitive Cyber Club), as we have a bunch of old ITS division hardware and donated networking gear that we’ve made into a Proxmox cluster. In the previous year, I started making a python package for the Proxmox REST API, and some basic scripts to ensure our range has the appropriate users, and that they automatically get the correct permissions for their range VMs at each club meeting session.

References

• Erik Biedrzycki previous capstone project

• Maybe we can incorporate Paul Gleason/Oliver Mustoe's Proxmox as block-code project???

• Refer to Ansible content used by the Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition black team from previous years

• We have not been able to find any open-source tools/solutions for Cyber Ranges on Proxmox (though there are plenty of people who seem to have commercial products for running a cyber range)