The discard daemon must be disabled on AIX.
Overview
| Finding ID | Version | Rule ID | IA Controls | Severity |
| V-215377 | AIX7-00-003072 | SV-215377r958478_rule | CCI-000381 | medium |
| Description | ||||
| The discard service is used as a debugging and measurement tool. It sets up a listening socket and ignores data that it receives. This is a /dev/null service and is obsolete. This can be used in DoS attacks and therefore, must be disabled to prevent attacks. | ||||
| STIG | Date | |||
| IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide | 2024-08-16 | |||
Details
Check Text (C-215377r958478_chk)
From the command prompt, execute the following command:
# grep "^discard[[:blank:]]" /etc/inetd.conf
If there is any output from the command, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-16573r294583_fix)
In "/etc/inetd.conf", comment out the "discard" entries by running commands:
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'tcp'
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'udp'
Restart inetd:
# refresh -s inetd