tc Server UI must limit the number of times that each TCP connection is kept alive.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-88787	VROM-TC-000035	SV-99437r1_rule		Medium

Description
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 attacks. An advantage of KeepAlive is the reduced latency in subsequent requests (no handshaking). However, a disadvantage is that server resources are not available to handle other requests while a connection is maintained between the server and the client. tc Server can be configured to limit the number of subsequent requests that one client can submit to the server over an established connection. This limit helps provide a balance between the advantages of KeepAlive, while not allowing any one connection being held too long by any one client. “maxKeepAliveRequests” is the tc Server attribute which sets this limit.

Description

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 attacks. An advantage of KeepAlive is the reduced latency in subsequent requests (no handshaking). However, a disadvantage is that server resources are not available to handle other requests while a connection is maintained between the server and the client. tc Server can be configured to limit the number of subsequent requests that one client can submit to the server over an established connection. This limit helps provide a balance between the advantages of KeepAlive, while not allowing any one connection being held too long by any one client. “maxKeepAliveRequests” is the tc Server attribute which sets this limit.

STIG	Date
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.x tc Server Security Technical Implementation Guide	2018-10-12

Details

Check Text ( C-88479r1_chk )
Navigate to and open /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-web-app/conf/server.xml. Navigate to each of the nodes. If the value of “maxKeepAliveRequests” is not set to “15” or is missing, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-95529r1_fix)
Navigate to and open /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-web-app/conf/server.xml. Navigate to each of the nodes. Configure each with the value 'maxKeepAliveRequests="15"'.