The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol must be disabled or not installed unless required.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-22530	GEN007480	SV-38913r1_rule	ECSC-1	Medium

Description
The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol is a relatively new protocol developed by Oracle for communication between the nodes of a cluster. Binding this protocol to the network stack increases the attack surface of the host. Unprivileged local processes may be able to cause the system to dynamically load a protocol handler by opening a socket using the protocol.

STIG	Date
AIX 5.3 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2012-05-25

Details

Check Text ( C-37904r1_chk )
AIX has RDS protocol installed as part of the 'bos.net.tcp.client' fileset. The RDS protocol in primarily used for communication on INFI-Band interfaces. The protocol is manually loaded with the bypassctrl command. Determine if RDS is currently loaded. #genkex \| grep rds If the RDS protocol is loaded, ask the SA if RDS is required by application software running on the system. If so, this is not applicable. If the RDS protocol is loaded and the protocol is not used by application software, this is a finding.

Check Text ( C-37904r1_chk )

AIX has RDS protocol installed as part of the 'bos.net.tcp.client' fileset. The RDS protocol in primarily used for communication on INFI-Band interfaces. The protocol is manually loaded with the bypassctrl command.

Determine if RDS is currently loaded.
#genkex | grep rds

If the RDS protocol is loaded, ask the SA if RDS is required by application software running on the system. If so, this is not applicable.

If the RDS protocol is loaded and the protocol is not used by application software, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-33161r1_fix)
Configure the system to not automatically load the RDS protocol handler. Check startup scripts for 'bypassctrl load rds' and comment out the bypassctrl commands. Unload the driver from the kernel. # bypassctrl unload rds