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← Back to VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-256567

CAT II (Medium)

The Photon operating system must not forward IPv4 or IPv6 source-routed packets.

Rule ID

SV-256567r991589_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R4

CCIs

CCI-000366

Discussion

Source routing is an Internet Protocol mechanism that allows an IP packet to carry information, a list of addresses, that tells a router the path the packet must take. There is also an option to record the hops as the route is traversed. The list of hops taken, the "route record", provides the destination with a return path to the source. This allows the source (the sending host) to specify the route, loosely or strictly, ignoring the routing tables of some or all of the routers. It can allow a user to redirect network traffic for malicious purposes and should therefore be disabled.

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command:

# /sbin/sysctl -a --pattern "net.ipv[4|6].conf.(all|default|eth.*).accept_source_route"

Expected result:

net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv6.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Note: The number of "ethx" lines returned is dependent on the number of interfaces. Every "ethx" entry must be set to "0".

Fix Text

At the command line, run the following command:

# for SETTING in $(/sbin/sysctl -aN --pattern "net.ipv[4|6].conf.(all|default|eth.*).accept_source_route"); do sed -i -e "/^${SETTING}/d" /etc/sysctl.conf;echo $SETTING=0>>/etc/sysctl.conf; done
# /sbin/sysctl --load