AOSX-10-000035 - The operating system must implement DoD-approved encryption to protect the confidentiality of remote access sessions.

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Information

The 'rexec' service must be disabled. The 'rexec' service does not implement crypto and has had several security vulnerabilities in the past. It is disabled by default; enabling it would increase the attack surface of the system.

Without confidentiality protection mechanisms, unauthorized individuals may gain access to sensitive information via a remote access session.

Remote access is access to DoD non-public information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless.

Encryption provides a means to secure the remote connection to prevent unauthorized access to the data traversing the remote access connection (e.g., RDP) thereby providing a degree of confidentiality. The encryption strength of mechanism is selected based on the security categorization of the information

Solution

To disable the 'rexec' service, run the following command:

sudo launchctl disable system/com.apple.rexecd

The system may need to be restarted for the update to take effect.

See Also

http://iasecontent.disa.mil/stigs/zip/U_Apple_OS_X_10-10_Workstation_V1R5_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7, CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000068, Rule-ID|SV-73959r1_rule, STIG-ID|AOSX-10-000035, Vuln-ID|V-59529

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 3d3bd90abcd6befd6ec3a15d10ea37cd1f7b6e02237701fa2a14634ba733113a