Title

The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol must be disabled or not installed unless required. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol is a relatively new protocol developed by Oracle for communication between the nodes of a cluster. Binding this protocol to the network stack increases the attack surface of the host. Unprivileged local processes may be able to cause the system to dynamically load a protocol handler by opening a socket using the protocol.

Check Content

AIX has RDS protocol installed as part of the 'bos.net.tcp.client' fileset. The RDS protocol in primarily used for communication on INFI-Band interfaces. The protocol is manually loaded with the bypassctrl command. Determine if RDS is currently loaded. #genkex | grep rds If the RDS protocol is loaded, ask the SA if RDS is required by application software running on the system. If so, this is not applicable. If the RDS protocol is loaded and the protocol is not used by application software, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the system to not automatically load the RDS protocol handler. Check startup scripts for 'bypassctrl load rds' and comment out the bypassctrl commands. Unload the driver from the kernel. # bypassctrl unload rds

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-38913r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-22530

Group Title: GEN007480

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.