vSphere UI must not enable support for TRACE requests.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-256803	VCUI-70-000026	SV-256803r889408_rule		Medium

Description
"TRACE" is a technique for a user to request internal information about Tomcat. This is useful during product development but should not be enabled in production. Allowing an attacker to conduct a TRACE operation against the web service will expose information that would be useful to perform a more targeted attack. vSphere UI provides the "allowTrace" parameter as means to disable responding to TRACE requests.

Description

"TRACE" is a technique for a user to request internal information about Tomcat. This is useful during product development but should not be enabled in production. Allowing an attacker to conduct a TRACE operation against the web service will expose information that would be useful to perform a more targeted attack. vSphere UI provides the "allowTrace" parameter as means to disable responding to TRACE requests.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance UI Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-02-21

Details

Check Text ( C-60478r889406_chk )
At the command prompt, run the following command: # grep allowTrace /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml If "allowTrace" is set to "true", this is a finding. If no line is returned, this is not a finding.

Fix Text (F-60421r889407_fix)
Navigate to and open: /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml Navigate to and locate 'allowTrace="true"'. Remove the 'allowTrace="true"' setting. Restart the service with the following command: # vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui