Title

The number of allowed simultaneous requests must be set. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Resource exhaustion can occur when an unlimited number of concurrent requests are allowed on a web site, facilitating a denial of service attack. Mitigating this kind of attack will include limiting the number of concurrent HTTP/HTTPS requests per IP address and may include, where feasible, limiting parameter values associated with keepalive, (i.e., a parameter used to limit the amount of time a connection may be inactive).

Check Content

Locate the Apache httpd.conf file. If unable to locate the file, perform a search of the system to find the location of the file. Open the httpd.conf file with an editor such as notepad, and search for the following uncommented directive: MaxKeepAliveRequests Every enabled MaxKeepAliveRequests value needs to be 100 or greater. If any directive is less than 100, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Set the MaxKeepAliveRequests directive to 100 or greater.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-33105r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-2240

Group Title: WG110

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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