The vCenter UI service must be configured to fail to a known safe state if system initialization fails.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-259113	VCUI-80-000062	SV-259113r935243_rule		Medium

Description
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 service abort startup on any initialization failure rather than continuing in a degraded, and potentially insecure, state.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance User Interface (UI) Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-10-29

Details

Check Text ( C-62853r935241_chk )
At the command line, run the following command: # grep EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Example result: org.apache.catalina.startup.EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE=true If there are no results, or if the "org.apache.catalina.startup.EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE" is not set to "true", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-62762r935242_fix)
Navigate to and open: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Add or change the following line: org.apache.catalina.startup.EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE=true Restart the service with the following command: # vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui