AS24-U1-000520 - The Apache web server must generate a session ID using as much of the character set as possible to reduce the risk of brute force.

Information

Generating a session identifier (ID) that is not easily guessed through brute force is essential to deter several types of session attacks. By knowing the session ID, an attacker can hijack a user session that has already been user-authenticated by the hosted application. The attacker does not need to guess user identifiers and passwords or have a secure token since the user session has already been authenticated.

By generating session IDs that contain as much of the character set as possible, i.e., A-Z, a-z, and 0-9, the session ID becomes exponentially harder to guess.

Satisfies: SRG-APP-000223-WSR-000145, SRG-APP-000224-WSR-000135, SRG-APP-000224-WSR-000136, SRG-APP-000224-WSR-000138

Solution

Determine the location of the 'HTTPD_ROOT' directory and the 'httpd.conf' file:

# apachectl -V | egrep -i 'httpd_root|server_config_file'
-D HTTPD_ROOT='/etc/httpd'
-D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE='conf/httpd.conf'

Load the 'unique_id_module'.

Example: LoadModule unique_id_module modules/mod_unique_id.so

Restart Apache: apachectl restart

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Apache_Server_2-4_Unix_Y24M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|SC-23(3), CAT|I, CCI|CCI-001188, CCI|CCI-001664, Rule-ID|SV-214253r961119_rule, STIG-ID|AS24-U1-000520, STIG-Legacy|SV-102777, STIG-Legacy|V-92689, Vuln-ID|V-214253

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 36b88eceec78116e0b48d8e76a991079fd378d6836e15fbc8f8c2d1852bf5abd