The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol must be disabled on AIX.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-215394	AIX7-00-003089	SV-215394r508663_rule		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. 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. To prevent possible attacks this protocol must be disabled unless required.

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. 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. To prevent possible attacks this protocol must be disabled unless required.

STIG	Date
IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-05-17

Details

Check Text ( C-16592r294633_chk )
Determine if RDS is currently loaded: # genkex \| grep rds If there is any output from the command, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-16590r294634_fix)
Configure the system to not automatically load the RDS protocol handler. Check startup scripts for "bypasscrtl load rds" and comment out the "bypassctrl" commands. Unload the driver from the kernel: # bypassctrl unload rds