4.8 Restrict access to Tomcat catalina.properties

Information

catalina.properties is a Java properties file which contains settings for Tomcat including class loader information, security package lists, and performance properties. It is recommended that access to this file properly protect from unauthorized changes.

Rationale:

Restricting access to this file will prevent local users from maliciously or inadvertently altering Tomcat's security policy.

Solution

Perform the following to restrict access to catalina.properties:

Set the ownership of the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.properties to tomcat_admin:tomcat.

# chown tomcat_admin:tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.properties

Set the permissions of the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.properties to 600

# chmod 600 $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.properties

Default Value:

The default permissions of the top-level directories are 600.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/4103