EX13-CA-000060 - Exchange must have Send Fatal Errors to Microsoft disabled.

Information

Log files help establish a history of activities, and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. This setting enables an automated log entry to be sent to Microsoft giving general details about the nature and location of the error. Microsoft, in turn, uses this information to improve the robustness of their product.

While this type of debugging information would not ordinarily contain sensitive information, it may alert eavesdroppers to the existence of problems in your Exchange organization. At the very least, it could alert them to (possibly) advantageous timing to mount an attack. At worst, it may provide them with information as to which aspects of Exchange are causing problems and might be vulnerable (or at least sensitive) to attack.

All system errors in Exchange will result in outbound traffic that may be identified by an eavesdropper. For this reason, the 'Report Fatal Errors to Microsoft' feature must be disabled.

Solution

Open the Exchange Management Shell and enter the following command:

Set-ExchangeServer -Identity <IdentityName> -ErrorReportingEnabled $false

Note: The <IdentityName> value must be in quotes.

Repeat the procedure for each Identity.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_MS_Exchange_2013_Y21M12_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7a., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000381, Rule-ID|SV-234776r617269_rule, STIG-ID|EX13-CA-000060, STIG-Legacy|SV-84359, STIG-Legacy|V-69737, Vuln-ID|V-234776

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: 494cc8e1a9319de5ab5358e43c39d87f1a23de5f3bcd314b0e8515ac7dba5e49