RHEL 9 must limit the number of bogus Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) response errors logs.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-257967	RHEL-09-253060	SV-257967r925888_rule		Medium

Description
Some routers will send responses to broadcast frames that violate RFC-1122, which fills up a log file system with many useless error messages. An attacker may take advantage of this and attempt to flood the logs with bogus error logs. Ignoring bogus ICMP error responses reduces log size, although some activity would not be logged.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-12-01

Details

Check Text ( C-61708r925886_chk )

The runtime status of the net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses kernel parameter can be queried by running the following command: $ sudo sysctl net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1 If "net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses" is not set to "1", this is a finding. Check that the configuration files are present to enable this network parameter. $ sudo /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysctl --cat-config | egrep -v '^(#|;)' | grep -F net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_response | tail -1 net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_response = 1 If "net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_response" is not set to "1" or is missing, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-61632r925887_fix)
Configure RHEL 9 to not log bogus ICMP errors: Add or edit the following line in a single system configuration file, in the "/etc/sysctl.d/" directory: net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1 Load settings from all system configuration files with the following command: $ sudo sysctl --system