vSphere UI must fail to a known safe state if system initialization fails, shutdown fails, or aborts fail.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-256796	VCUI-70-000019	SV-256796r889387_rule		Medium

Description
Determining a safe state for failure and weighing that against a potential denial of service for users depends on what type of application the web server is hosting. For the Security Token Service, it is preferable that the service abort startup on any initialization failure rather than continuing in a degraded, and potentially insecure, state.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance UI Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-06-15

Details

Check Text ( C-60471r889385_chk )
At the command line, run the following command: # grep EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Expected result: org.apache.catalina.startup.EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE=true If the output of the command does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-60414r889386_fix)
Navigate to and open: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/catalina.properties Add or change the following line: org.apache.catalina.startup.EXIT_ON_INIT_FAILURE=true Restart the service with the following command: # vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui