Re: MS Defender for OL7 Oracle DB servers

Just a heads-up as to where (I think) the world is heading...

Years ago, I was working at a large US telecom, and one of the goals of their virtualization efforts (i.e. moves to VMs on-prem, moves to containers, moves to cloud, etc) is to enable themselves to rebuild every virtual machine from a trusted image every week.

If a VM becomes "infected" with anything, then that will last for only a finite period before it is wiped out by a scheduled automated rebuild, if it is not detected sooner and then wiped out by a manually-initiated automated rebuild.

This doesn't mean that other preventative or protective efforts are reduced in any way, just that this is a last protective measure, for when all else fails.  And, as we know, all else will indeed fail, eventually.

Back then, they included a requirement for automated rebuild from a trusted image to be scheduled every 6-9 months for all newly-built infrastructure.  As their skills improve, the stated plan was to gradually reduce the scheduled frequency from 6-9 months down to one week.

So, if you're wondering about your organization's push to automation, to virtualization, to containers, or to cloud, then it's not necessarily because these things are "shiny" and "new", or somehow less expensive in themselves.  It is because these technologies are seen as stepping stones to a possibly-as-yet-unstated goal in the never-ending arms race of infoSec.

On 3/4/2022 11:17 PM, tefetufe wrote:
> Thats great to hear that it can work without any issues as sooner or
> later ask will come back again
>
> We could not find the right combination which is not cpu hungry
> despite multiple calls with microsoft. I wish they have the real
> working combination published so we can try again.
>
> My only question to your argument will be why oracle doesnt bundle it
> by default in 2022 for their exacs and exacc solutuons. Security is
> sold as major feature and malware protection is something they don't
> have on linux is a question mark for me
>
>
>
> On Sat, 5 Mar 2022 at 00:26 Niklas Iveslatt
> <niklas.iveslattx_at_arisant.com> wrote:
>
> I usually don't speak up much but I am very passionate
> about security and the protection of people's data in general. I
> have to say that some kind of antimalware should be installed on
> all servers, especially on database servers. It is 2022 for
> goodness sake and we have security breaches galore. All the
> leading anti-malware vendors have tons of configuration options -
> both for real-time and scheduled scan configurations.
>
> In the last many years I have not seen a case where running
> antimalware, properly configured, caused issues. This includes
> deployments we have done on ExaCS, DBCS, and other very
> Oracle-centric solutions.
>
> The requirement needs to be to have anti-malware installed on all
> servers and then configure it to work with the workload. We as IT
> people have the responsibility to enforce this in my view.
>
> In the case of ms defender, it is a highly intelligent engine that
> is just getting better and better over time and I see no reason
> why this should not work - we just finished up an OCI project
> where this was deployed successfully in a Peoplesoft environment
> running Oracle databases.
>
> Niklas Iveslatt
> Senior Partner
>
>
>
>
> Arisant LLC ~ http://www.arisant.com
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>
>
> On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 12:37 PM tefetufe <coskan_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Despite being on Exacc and ASM and exclude all binary folders
> for grid and db ms defender managed to give us trouble and I
> finally convinced the requester team not to have defender on
> db systems
>
> Issues
> high cpu usage for the process (last thing you want is virus
> scan bursn expensive cpu cycles)
> I had a cluster crash where defender was looking so suspicious
> when issue was happpening,  maybe I just saw the excuse that I
> needed :)
>
> Since defender is gone did not see any single stability problem
>
> Also on vmware it gave us big hassle when we wipe huge db
> sitting on xfs to refresh it. It was blocking the files to be
> deleted and all of our refret automations failed due to being
> defended by defender.
>
> My suggestion is avoid at all cost if you can
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 at 19:29 Tim Gorman <tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Rich,
>
> As documented HERE
> <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/microsoft-defender-endpoint-linux?view=o365-worldwide#common-applications-to-microsoft-defender-for-endpoint-can-impact>...
>
> /*Common Applications to Microsoft Defender for
> Endpoint can impact*//
> ////
> //High I/O workloads from certain applications can
> experience performance issues when Microsoft Defender
> for Endpoint is installed. These include applications
> for developer scenarios like Jenkins and Jira, and
> database workloads like OracleDB and Postgres. If
> experiencing performance degradation, consider setting
> exclusions for trusted applications, keeping //Common
> Exclusion Mistakes for Microsoft Defender Antivirus
> <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/common-exclusion-mistakes-microsoft-defender-antivirus>//in
> mind. For additional guidance, consider consulting
> documentation regarding antivirus exclusions from
> third party applications./
>
>
> Personally, I think any sort of "protective" software
> running on a database server is another good reason to use
> Oracle ASM, as A/V software generally "protects" only
> filesystem-based files, and do not recognize (or bother
> with) block-special or character-special devices. Just my
> opinion, when you can't prevent A/V software from being
> used in the first place.
>
> Hope this helps...
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> -Tim
>
>
>
> On 3/4/2022 6:50 AM, Rich J wrote:
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Anyone run into any issues running MS Defender on their
>> Oracle DB servers on Linux?  This would be on OL7 for now
>> (mostly 7.7).
>>
>> One would think that the Oracle datafile directories plus
>> the ADR tree should be excluded.  I'm just wondering if
>> there's other common "gotchas" that others have run into.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Rich
>
> --
> --
> Coskan GUNDOGAR
>
> Oracle DBA
>
> Email: coskan_at_gmail.com
> Blog: http://coskan.wordpress.com
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/coskan
> Linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/coskan
>
> --
> --
> Coskan GUNDOGAR
>
> Oracle DBA
>
> Email: coskan_at_gmail.com
> Blog: http://coskan.wordpress.com
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/coskan
> Linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/coskan

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