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V-256802

CAT II (Medium)

vSphere UI must be configured to show error pages with minimal information.

Rule ID

SV-256802r889405_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 7.0 vCenter Appliance UI Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R2

CCIs

CCI-001312

Discussion

Web servers will often display error messages to client users with enough information to aid in the debugging of the error. The information given back in error messages may display the web server type, version, patches installed, plug-ins and modules installed, type of code being used by the hosted application, and any backends being used for data storage. This information could be used by an attacker to blueprint what type of attacks might be successful. Therefore, vSphere UI must be configured to not show server version information in error pages.

Check Content

At the command prompt, run the following command: 
 
# xmllint --format /usr/lib/vmware-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml | xmllint --xpath '/Server/Service/Engine/Host/Valve[@className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve"]' - 
 
Expected result: 
 
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve" showServerInfo="false" showReport="false"/> 
 
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-vsphere-ui/server/conf/server.xml 
 
Locate the following Host block: 
 
<Host ...> 
... 
</Host> 
 
Inside this block, remove any existing Valve with className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve" and add the following: 
 
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve" showServerInfo="false" showReport="false"/> 
 
Restart the service with the following command: 
 
# vmon-cli --restart vsphere-ui