RHEL 8 must not send Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirects.

STIG ID: RHEL-08-040220  |  SRG: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227 | Severity: medium |  CCI: CCI-000366

Vulnerability Discussion

ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages contain information from the system's route table, possibly revealing portions of the network topology.

There are notable differences between Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). There is only a directive to disable sending of IPv4 redirected packets. Refer to RFC4294 for an explanation of "IPv6 Node Requirements", which resulted in this difference between IPv4 and IPv6.

Check

Verify RHEL 8 does not IPv4 ICMP redirect messages.

Note: If either IPv4 or IPv6 is disabled on the system, this requirement only applies to the active internet protocol version.

Check the value of the "all send_redirects" variables with the following command:

$ sudo sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects

net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0

If the returned line does not have a value of "0", or a line is not returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 8 to not allow interfaces to perform IPv4 ICMP redirects with the following command:

$ sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects=0

If "0" is not the system's default value then add or update the following line in the appropriate file under "/etc/sysctl.d":

net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects=0