2.18 Disable Userland Proxy

Information

The docker daemon starts a userland proxy service for port forwarding whenever a port is exposed. Where hairpin NAT is available, this service is generally superfluous to requirements and can be disabled.

Rationale:

Docker engine provides two mechanisms for forwarding ports from the host to containers, hairpin NAT, and a userland proxy. In most circumstances, the hairpin NAT mode is preferred as it improves performance and makes use of native Linux iptables functionality instead of an additional component.

Where hairpin NAT is available, the userland proxy should be disabled on startup to reduce the attack surface of the installation.

Solution

Run the Docker daemon as below:

dockerd--userland-proxy=false

Impact:

Some systems with older Linux kernels may not be able to support hairpin NAT and therefore require the userland proxy service. Also, some networking setups can be impacted by theremoval of the userland proxy.

Default Value:

By default, the userland proxy is enabled.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/1476

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7b.

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 11a7f7586deb2dc62423e3dd75ab6f6e069e4898520de6ea0deeb51260c06712