PHTN-30-000107 - The Photon operating system must send Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) timestamps.

Information

TCP timestamps are used to provide protection against wrapped sequence numbers. It is possible to calculate system uptime (and boot time) by analyzing TCP timestamps. These calculated uptimes can help a bad actor in determining likely patch levels for vulnerabilities.

Solution

At the command line, run the following commands:

# sed -i -e '/^net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps/d' /etc/sysctl.conf
# echo net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps=1>>/etc/sysctl.conf
# /sbin/sysctl --load

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_7-0_Y25M01_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-256576r991589_rule, STIG-ID|PHTN-30-000107, Vuln-ID|V-256576

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: ae544f69df8c7c19021d73e3e1e677014610aaaf3e5ba51d465a92aa2c358caa