Title

An application firewall must protect against or limit the effects of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks by ensuring the Ubuntu operating system is implementing rate-limiting measures on impacted network interfaces. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

DoS is a condition when a resource is not available for legitimate users. When this occurs, the organization either cannot accomplish its mission or must operate at degraded capacity. This requirement addresses the configuration of the Ubuntu operating system to mitigate the impact of DoS attacks that have occurred or are ongoing on system availability. For each system, known and potential DoS attacks must be identified and solutions for each type implemented. A variety of technologies exist to limit or, in some cases, eliminate the effects of DoS attacks (e.g., limiting processes or establishing memory partitions). Employing increased capacity and bandwidth, combined with service redundancy, may reduce the susceptibility to some DoS attacks.

Check Content

Verify an application firewall is configured to rate limit any connection to the system. Check that the Uncomplicated Firewall is configured to rate limit any connection to the system with the following command: # sudo ufw show raw Chain ufw-user-input (1 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 ufw-user-limit all -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 ctstate NEW recent: UPDATE seconds: 30 hit_count: 6 name: DEFAULT side: source mask: 255.255.255.255 0 0 ufw-user-limit-accept all -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 If any service is not rate limited by the Uncomplicated Firewall, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the application firewall to protect against or limit the effects of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks by ensuring the Ubuntu operating system is implementing rate-limiting measures on impacted network interfaces. Run the following command replacing "[service]" with the service that needs to be rate limited. # sudo ufw limit [service] Or rate-limiting can be done on an interface. An example of adding a rate-limit on the eth0 interface: # sudo ufw limit in on eth0

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-215138r610931_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-215138

Group Title: SRG-OS-000420-GPOS-00186

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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