SV-38709r1: The system must not have the discard service active. | AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

The system must not have the discard service active.

Description

Discussion Text

The discard service runs as root from the inetd server and can be used in Denial of Service attacks. The discard service is unnecessary and it increases the attack vector of the system.

How this relates to the STIG checklist: STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-001436

Additional Details

Responsibility

System Administrator

IA Controls

ECSC-1

References

DPMS Target AIX 6.1 DISA DPMS Target AIX 6.1 2176

SCC Automation Reference

The reconstructed evaluation script behind this rule's OVAL check(s) — every module a compound check combines, with this rule's own concrete values and DISA's SCC tool's real per-module mechanism curated from static teardown of SCC releases.

#!/bin/bash
# Reconstructed from oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:393
# The system must not have the discard service active.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# discard daemon not running
# inetd_object (inetd_test)
test_1() {
  (cat /etc/inetd.conf 2>/dev/null) | grep -Pq '.*internal$'
}

if test_1; then
  echo "PASS"
else
  echo "FAIL"
fi

Assessment Script Powered by AISandbox-executed

A standalone Shell script to assess this control automatically. Review before running it in your environment.

Syntax-checked and actually executed in an isolated sandbox (not the real system this checks) — confirmed to run without errors.

#!/bin/sh
# This script implements the OVAL definition oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:393
if [ ! -f "/etc/inetd.conf" ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
grep -qE "^discard[[:space:]][0-9]+:[[:space:]][0-9]+:[[:space:]]*.*internal[[:space:]]*$" /etc/inetd.conf && grep -qE "^discard[[:space:]][0-9]+:[[:space:]][0-9]+:[[:space:]]*.*internal[[:space:]]*$" /etc/inetd.conf && echo "FAIL"; exit 1
echo "PASS"; exit 0

Remediation

Edit /etc/inetd.conf and comment out the discard service line for both TCP and UDP protocols. 
Restart the inetd service.
#refresh -s inetd