2.2 Alter the Advertised server.number String

Information

The server.number attribute represents the specific version of Tomcat that is executing. This value is presented to Tomcat clients when connect.

Rationale:

Advertising a valid server version may provide attackers with information useful for locating vulnerabilities that affect the server platform. Altering the server version string may increase the complexity for attackers to determine which vulnerabilities affect the server platform.

Solution

Perform the following to alter the server version string that gets displayed when clients connect to the server.

Extract the ServerInfo.properties file from the catalina.jar file:

$ cd $CATALINA_HOME/lib
$ jar xf catalina.jar org/apache/catalina/util/ServerInfo.properties

Navigate to the util directory that was created

$ cd org/apache/Catalina/util

Open ServerInfo.properties in an editor

Update the server.number attribute

server.number=<someversion>

Update the catalina.jar with the modified ServerInfo.properties file.

$ jar uf catalina.jar org/apache/catalina/util/ServerInfo.properties

Default Value:

The default value for the server.number attribute is a four part version number, such as 9.0.0.0.

See Also

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

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND INFORMATION INTEGRITY

References: 800-53|SI-3, 800-53|SI-8, CSCv7|7.9, CSCv7|13.2

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 22d6fd5651e4a8cd5da2d54235e6c561c566eb35db95279b8a22c9edd75fb763