SV-38714r1: The system must not have the talk or ntalk services active. | AIX 6.1 SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

The system must not have the talk or ntalk services active.

Description

Discussion Text

The talk and ntalk commands allow users on the same or different systems on converse. The talk daemons are started from the inetd process and run as root. These unnecessary processes increase the attack vector of the system and may cause Denial of Service by scrambling the users display.

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:398
# The system must not have the talk or ntalk services active.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

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

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
# OVAL Definition: oval:mil.disa.fso.aix11:def:398
if [ ! -f "/etc/inetd.conf" ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
if [ $(grep -E "^(?!#).*talkd" /etc/inetd.conf | grep -E "(tcp|udp).*(talk|ntalk)" | wc -l) -eq 0 ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; else echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi

Remediation

Edit /etc/inetd.conf and comment out TCP and UDP for the talk service.   
Edit /etc/inetd.conf and comment out TCP and UDP for the ntalk service.

Restart the inetd service.   
# refresh -s inetd