Disable Interactive Serial Console Support

01 Sign in to Google Cloud Management Console.

02 Select the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project that you want to examine from the console top navigation bar.

03 Navigate to Google Compute Engine dashboard at https://console.cloud.google.com/compute.

04 In the navigation panel, select VM instances to access the list with the virtual machine (VM) instances provisioned for the selected project.

05 Click on the name of the VM instance that you want to examine.

06 Click EDIT to access the instance configuration edit mode, then under Remote access check the Enable connecting to serial ports configuration setting status. If the Enable connecting to serial ports setting checkbox is selected, the verified Google Compute Engine instance is configured with interactive serial console support, therefore the instance configuration is not secure and compliant.

07 Repeat step no. 5 and 6 for each virtual machine instance created within the selected project.

08 Repeat steps no. 2 – 7 for each project deployed in your Google Cloud account.

01 Run projects list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using custom query filters to list the IDs of all the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) projects available in your Google Cloud account:

gcloud projects list
	--format="table(projectId)"

02 The command output should return the requested GCP project IDs:

PROJECT_ID
cc-production-web-project-112233
cc-application-stack-project-123123

03 Run compute instances list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the ID of the GCP project that you want to examine as identifier parameter and custom query filters to describe the name and zone for each VM instance provisioned within the selected project:

gcloud compute instances list
	--project cc-production-web-project-112233
	--format="table(name,zone)"

04 The command output should return the name(s) of the instance(s) within the selected GCP project:

NAME                   ZONE
cc-prod-vm1-instance   us-central1-a
cc-prod-vm2-instance   us-central1-a

05 Run compute instances describe command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the name and the zone of the instance that you want to examine as identifier parameter and custom filtering to describe the configuration metadata available for the selected VM instance:

gcloud compute instances describe cc-prod-vm1-instance
	--zone us-central1-a
	--format="json(metadata.items)"

06 The command output should return the requested instance configuration metadata:

{
  "metadata": {
    "items": [
      {
        "key": "block-project-ssh-keys",
        "value": "true"
      },
      {
        "key": "ssh-keys",
        "value": "prod-ssh:ssh-rsa ... prod-ssh"
      },
      {
        "key": "serial-port-enable",
        "value": "true"
      }
    ]
  }
}

07 Repeat step no. 5 and 6 for each virtual machine instance provisioned in the selected project.

08 Repeat steps no. 3 – 7 for each GCP project deployed in your Google Cloud account.

01 Sign in to Google Cloud Management Console.

02 Select the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project that you want to examine from the console top navigation bar.

03 Navigate to Google Compute Engine dashboard at https://console.cloud.google.com/compute.

04 In the navigation panel, select VM instances to access the list with the virtual machine (VM) instances created for the selected project.

05 Click on the name of the VM instance that you want to reconfigure.

06 On the selected instance configuration page, click EDIT to enter the edit mode.

07 Under Remote access, unselect Enable connecting to serial ports configuration setting to disable interactive serial console support for the selected Google Cloud VM instance.

08 Click Save to apply the configuration changes.

09 If required, repeat steps no. 5 – 7 to reconfigure other virtual machine instances provisioned for the selected project.

10 Repeat steps no. 2 – 9 for each GCP project available in your Google Cloud account.

01 Run compute instances add-metadata command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the name and the zone of the instance that you want to reconfigure as identifier (see Audit section part II to identify the right resource), to update the configuration metadata and disable the interactive serial console support for the selected Google Compute Engine instance:

gcloud compute instances add-metadata cc-prod-vm1-instance
	--zone us-central1-a
	--metadata=serial-port-enable=false

02 The command output should return the URL of the reconfigured VM instance:

Updated [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/cc-production-web-project-112233/zones/us-central1-a/instances/cc-prod-vm1-instance].

03 If required, repeat steps no. 1 and 2 to reconfigure other virtual machine instances available within the selected project.

04 Repeat steps no. 1 – 3 for each GCP project deployed in your Google Cloud account.