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V-256702

CAT II (Medium)

ESX Agent Manager must set the secure flag for cookies.

Rule ID

SV-256702r888662_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance EAM Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R2

CCIs

CCI-001813

Discussion

The secure flag is an option that can be set by the application server when sending a new cookie to the user within an HTTP Response. The purpose of the secure flag is to prevent cookies from being observed by unauthorized parties due to the transmission of a cookie in clear text. By setting the secure flag, the browser will prevent the transmission of a cookie over an unencrypted channel. The ESX Agent Manager is configured to only be accessible over a Transport Layer Security (TLS) tunnel, but this cookie flag is still a recommended best practice.

Check Content

At the command prompt, run the following command:

# xmllint --format /usr/lib/vmware-eam/web/webapps/eam/WEB-INF/web.xml | sed 's/xmlns=".*"//g' | xmllint --xpath '/web-app/session-config/cookie-config/secure' -

Expected result:

<secure>true</secure>

If the output of the command does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/usr/lib/vmware-eam/web/webapps/eam/WEB-INF/web.xml

Navigate to the /<web-apps>/<session-config>/<cookie-config> node and configure it as follows:

    <cookie-config>
      <http-only>true</http-only>
      <secure>true</secure>
    </cookie-config>

Restart the service with the following command:

# vmon-cli --restart eam