The vCenter UI service must disable "ALLOW_BACKSLASH".
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-259133 | SRG-APP-000516-AS-000237 | VCUI-80-000151 | SV-259133r961863_rule | 2024-07-11 | 2 |
| Description |
|---|
| When Tomcat is installed behind a proxy configured to only allow access to certain contexts (web applications), an HTTP request containing "/\../" may allow attackers to work around the proxy restrictions using directory traversal attack methods. If "allow_backslash" is "true", the "\" character will be permitted as a path delimiter. The default value for the setting is "false", but Tomcat must always be configured as if no proxy restricting context access was used, and "allow_backslash" should be set to "false" to prevent directory-traversal-style attacks. This setting can create operability issues with noncompliant clients. |
| ℹ️ Check |
|---|
| At the command line, run the following command: # grep ALLOW_BACKSLASH /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Example result: org.apache.catalina.connector.ALLOW_BACKSLASH=false If "org.apache.catalina.connector.ALLOW_BACKSLASH" is not set to "false", this is a finding. If the "org.apache.catalina.connector.ALLOW_BACKSLASH" setting does not exist, this is not a finding. |
| ✔️ Fix |
|---|
| Navigate to and open: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Update or remove the following line: org.apache.catalina.connector.ALLOW_BACKSLASH=false Restart the service with the following command: # vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui |