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The Security Token Service must limit the number of concurrent connections permitted.


Overview

Finding ID Version Rule ID IA Controls Severity
V-239653 VCST-67-000002 SV-239653r816684_rule Medium
Description
Resource exhaustion can occur when an unlimited number of concurrent requests are allowed on a website, facilitating a denial-of-service attack. Unless the number of requests is controlled, the web server can consume enough system resources to cause a system crash. Mitigating this kind of attack will include limiting the number of concurrent HTTP/HTTPS requests. In Tomcat, each incoming request requires a thread for the duration of that request. If more simultaneous requests are received than can be handled by the currently available request processing threads, additional threads will be created up to the value of the "maxThreads" attribute.
STIG Date
VMware vSphere 6.7 STS Tomcat Security Technical Implementation Guide 2022-01-03

Details

Check Text ( C-42886r816682_chk )
Connect to the PSC, whether external or embedded.

At the command prompt, execute the following command:

# xmllint --format /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/conf/server.xml | sed '2 s/xmlns=".*"//g' | xmllint --xpath '/Server/Service/Executor[@name="tomcatThreadPool"]/@maxThreads' -

Expected result:

maxThreads="300"

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-42845r816683_fix)
Connect to the PSC, whether external or embedded.

Navigate to and open /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/conf/server.xml.

Navigate to the mode with the name of "tomcatThreadPool" and configure with the value:

'maxThreads="300"'

Note: The node should be configured as follows: