3.2 Ensure JDK Security Manager is Enabled

Information

The JDK's security manager allows applications to implement a security policy. It allows an application to permit or deny operations defined by the security policy.

In some situations there is a need to restrict applications from performing certain operations like read and writing to files, opening network connections etc. JDK's security manager provides a way to configure a security policy that can be applied to restrict the applications operations.

Note: The security manager is proposed to be deprecated and removed in future releases of JDK.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Enable the websphere.java.security property in ${server.config.dir}/bootstrap.properties file

websphere.java.security

and also confirm that the appropriate permissions are granted in the application's permission.xml file and/or in the javaPermission element specified in ${server.config.dir}/configDropins/overrides/*.xmlFor example,

<javaPermission className="java.security.PropertyPermission" name="os.name" actions="read" restriction="true" />

Impact:

Generally enabling the security manager can impact the performance because of the additional checks needed to restrict operations by applications. Applications can also fail to run with these additional checks in which case appropriate permissions have to configured for the application either in the server configuration files or the application specific permissions.xml file.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/7724

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-17

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: c704ce4fc2737fb5977730b0f2ea06ef659fb55c4d852443126b977af4c938c8