4.12 Restrict access to Tomcat server.xml

Information

server.xml contains Tomcat servlet definitions and configurations. 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 server.xml:

Set the ownership of the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml to tomcat_admin:tomcat.

# chown tomcat_admin:tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml

Set the permissions of the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml to 600

# chmod 600 $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml

Default Value:

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

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/11652

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL, MEDIA PROTECTION

References: 800-53|AC-3, 800-53|AC-5, 800-53|AC-6, 800-53|MP-2, CSCv7|14.6

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 1ea93dc7dfd54b8ae841d62096714d209a11a0ef2ced71790b64f7bdacb3eba4