2.6 Turn off TRACE

Warning! Audit Deprecated

This audit has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update.

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Information

The HTTP TRACE verb provides debugging and diagnostics information for a given request.

Rationale:

Diagnostic information, such as that found in the response to a TRACE request, often contains sensitive information which may useful to an attacker. By preventing Tomcat from providing this information, the risk of leaking sensitive information to a potential attacker is reduced.

Solution

Perform the following to prevent Tomcat from accepting a TRACE request:

Set the allowTrace attribute for each Connector specified in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml to false.

<Connector ... allowTrace='false' />

Alternatively, ensure the allowTrace attribute is absent from each Connector specified in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml.

Add the following as a child of the web-app root element, if present, in each web applications web.xml:

<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>restricted methods</web-resource-name>
...
<http-method>TRACE</http-method>
...
</web-resource-collection>
...
</security-constraint>

Default Value:

Tomcat does not allow the TRACE HTTP verb by default. Tomcat will only allow TRACE if the allowTrace attribute is present and set to true.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3090