3.2.1 Ensure IP forwarding is disabled

Information

The net.ipv4.ip_forward and net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding flags are used to tell the system whether it can forward packets or not.

Setting the flags to 0 ensures that a system with multiple interfaces (for example, a hard proxy), will never be able to forward packets, and therefore, never serve as a router.

Solution

Run the following commands to restore the default parameters and set the active kernel parameters:

# grep -Els "^s*net.ipv4.ip_forwards*=s*1" /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf | while read filename; do sed -ri "s/^s*(net.ipv4.ip_forwards*)(=)(s*S+b).*$/# *REMOVED* 1/" $filename; done; sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=0; sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1 # grep -Els "^s*net.ipv6.conf.all.forwardings*=s*1" /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf | while read filename; do sed -ri "s/^s*(net.ipv6.conf.all.forwardings*)(=)(s*S+b).*$/# *REMOVED* 1/" $filename; done; sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=0; sysctl -w net.ipv6.route.flush=1

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/8498