VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Secure Token Service (STS) Security Technical Implementation Guide

Overview

Version	Date	Finding Count (33)			Downloads
1	2023-10-29	CAT I (High): 0	CAT II (Med): 33	CAT III (Low): 0	Excel	JSON	XML

STIG Description
This Security Technical Implementation Guide is published as a tool to improve the security of Department of Defense (DOD) information systems. The requirements are derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 and related documents. Comments or proposed revisions to this document should be sent via email to the following address: disa.stig_spt@mail.mil.

Available Profiles

Classified	Public	Sensitive
I - Mission Critical Classified	I - Mission Critical Public	I - Mission Critical Sensitive	II - Mission Support Classified	II - Mission Support Public	II - Mission Support Sensitive	III - Administrative Classified	III - Administrative Public	III - Administrative Sensitive

Findings (MAC III - Administrative Sensitive)

Finding ID	Severity	Title	Description
V-258981	Medium	The vCenter STS service must set URIEncoding to UTF-8.	Invalid user input occurs when a user inserts data or characters into a hosted application's data entry field and the hosted application is unprepared to process that data. This results in...
V-258980	Medium	The vCenter STS service must be configured to fail to a known safe state if system initialization fails.	Determining a safe state for failure and weighing that against a potential denial of service for users depends on what type of application the web server is hosting. It is preferable that the...
V-258983	Medium	The vCenter STS service must set an inactive timeout for sessions.	Leaving sessions open indefinitely is a major security risk. An attacker can easily use an already authenticated session to access the hosted application as the previously authenticated user. By...
V-258982	Medium	The vCenter STS service "ErrorReportValve showServerInfo" must be set to "false".	The Error Report Valve is a simple error handler for HTTP status codes that will generate and return HTML error pages. It can also be configured to return predefined static HTML pages for specific...
V-258985	Medium	The vCenter STS service must limit the amount of time that each Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection is kept alive.	Denial of service (DoS) is one threat against web servers. Many DoS attacks attempt to consume web server resources in such a way that no more resources are available to satisfy legitimate...
V-258984	Medium	The vCenter STS service must offload log records onto a different system or media from the system being logged.	Information system logging capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis. Log record content that may be necessary to satisfy the requirement of this control includes, but is not limited...
V-258987	Medium	The vCenter STS service must configure the "setCharacterEncodingFilter" filter.	Invalid user input occurs when a user inserts data or characters into a hosted application's data entry field and the hosted application is unprepared to process that data. This results in...
V-258986	Medium	The vCenter STS service must limit the number of times that each Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection is kept alive.	KeepAlive provides long lived HTTP sessions that allow multiple requests to be sent over the same connection. Enabling KeepAlive mitigates the effects of several types of denial-of-service...
V-258989	Medium	The vCenter STS service DefaultServlet must be set to "readonly" for "PUT" and "DELETE" commands.	The default servlet (or DefaultServlet) is a special servlet provided with Tomcat that is called when no other suitable page is found in a particular folder. The DefaultServlet serves static...
V-258988	Medium	The vCenter STS service cookies must have "http-only" flag set.	Cookies are a common way to save session state over the HTTP(S) protocol. If attackers can compromise session data stored in a cookie, they are better able to launch an attack against the server...
V-258978	Medium	The vCenter STS service must be configured to use a specified IP address and port.	The server must be configured to listen on a specified IP address and port. Without specifying an IP address and port for server to use, the server will listen on all IP addresses...
V-258979	Medium	The vCenter STS service must be configured to limit data exposure between applications.	If RECYCLE_FACADES is true or if a security manager is in use, a new facade object will be created for each request. This reduces the chances that a bug in an application might expose data from...
V-259002	Medium	The vCenter STS service host-manager webapp must be removed.	Tomcat provides host management functionality through either a default host-manager webapp or through local editing of the configuration files. The host-manager webapp files must be deleted, and...
V-258974	Medium	The vCenter STS service must produce log records containing sufficient information regarding event details.	Remote access can be exploited by an attacker to compromise the server. By recording all remote access activities, it will be possible to determine the attacker's location, intent, and degree of...
V-258975	Medium	The vCenter STS service logs folder permissions must be set correctly.	Log data is essential in the investigation of events. The accuracy of the information is always pertinent. One of the first steps an attacker will take is the modification or deletion of log...
V-258976	Medium	The vCenter STS service must limit privileges for creating or modifying hosted application shared files.	Application servers have the ability to specify that the hosted applications use shared libraries. The application server must have a capability to divide roles based upon duties wherein one...
V-258977	Medium	The vCenter STS service must disable stack tracing.	Stack tracing provides debugging information from the application call stacks when a runtime error is encountered. If stack tracing is left enabled, Tomcat will provide this call stack information...
V-258970	Medium	The vCenter STS service must limit the number of maximum concurrent connections permitted.	Resource exhaustion can occur when an unlimited number of concurrent requests are allowed on a website, facilitating a denial-of-service attack. Unless the number of requests is controlled, the...
V-258971	Medium	The vCenter STS service must be configured to use strong encryption ciphers.	Tomcat has several remote communications channels. Examples are user requests via http/https, communication to a backend database, or communication to authenticate users. The encryption used to...
V-258972	Medium	The vCenter STS service cookies must have secure flag set.	The secure flag is an option that can be set by the application server when sending a new cookie to the user within an HTTP Response. The purpose of the secure flag is to prevent cookies from...
V-258973	Medium	The vCenter STS service must initiate session logging upon startup.	Logging must be started as soon as possible when a service starts and as late as possible when a service is stopped. Many forms of suspicious actions can be detected by analyzing logs for...
V-259000	Medium	The vCenter STS service must enable "ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER".	Some clients try to guess the character encoding of text media when the mandated default of ISO-8859-1 should be used. Some browsers will interpret as UTF-7 when the characters are safe for...
V-258998	Medium	The vCenter STS service files must have permissions in an out-of-the-box state.	As a rule, accounts on a web server are to be kept to a minimum. Only administrators, web managers, developers, auditors, and web authors require accounts on the machine hosting the web server....
V-258999	Medium	The vCenter STS service must disable "ALLOW_BACKSLASH".	When Tomcat is installed behind a proxy configured to only allow access to certain contexts (web applications), an HTTP request containing "/\../" may allow attackers to work around the proxy...
V-258996	Medium	The vCenter STS service default ROOT web application must be removed.	The default ROOT web application includes the version of Tomcat being used, links to Tomcat documentation, examples, FAQs, and mailing lists. The default ROOT web application must be removed from...
V-258997	Medium	The vCenter STS service default documentation must be removed.	Tomcat provides documentation and other directories in the default installation that do not serve a production use. These files must be deleted.
V-258994	Medium	The vCenter STS service xpoweredBy attribute must be disabled.	Individual connectors can be configured to display the Tomcat information to clients. This information can be used to identify server versions that can be useful to attackers for identifying...
V-258995	Medium	The vCenter STS service example applications must be removed.	Tomcat provides example applications, documentation, and other directories in the default installation that do not serve a production use. These files must be deleted.
V-258992	Medium	The vCenter STS service directory listings parameter must be disabled.	Enumeration techniques, such as URL parameter manipulation, rely on being able to obtain information about the web server's directory structure by locating directories without default pages. In...
V-258993	Medium	The vCenter STS service must have Autodeploy disabled.	Tomcat allows auto-deployment of applications while it is running. This can allow untested or malicious applications to be automatically loaded into production. Autodeploy must be disabled in production.
V-258990	Medium	The vCenter STS service shutdown port must be disabled.	Tomcat by default listens on TCP port 8005 to accept shutdown requests. By connecting to this port and sending the SHUTDOWN command, all applications within Tomcat are halted. The shutdown port is...
V-258991	Medium	The vCenter STS service debug parameter must be disabled.	Information needed by an attacker to begin looking for possible vulnerabilities in a web server includes any information about the web server and plug-ins or modules being used. When debugging or...
V-259001	Medium	The vCenter STS service manager webapp must be removed.	Tomcat provides management functionality through either a default manager webapp or through local editing of the configuration files. The manager webapp files must be deleted, and administration...