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The discard daemon must be disabled on AIX.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-215377 AIX7-00-003072 SV-215377r508663_rule Medium
Description
The discard service is used as a debugging and measurement tool. It sets up a listening socket and ignores data that it receives. This is a /dev/null service and is obsolete. This can be used in DoS attacks and therefore, must be disabled to prevent attacks.
STIG Date
IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide 2023-08-23

Details

Check Text ( C-16575r294582_chk )
From the command prompt, execute the following command:
# grep "^discard[[:blank:]]" /etc/inetd.conf

If there is any output from the command, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-16573r294583_fix)
In "/etc/inetd.conf", comment out the "discard" entries by running commands:
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'tcp'
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'udp'

Restart inetd:
# refresh -s inetd