The discard daemon must be disabled on AIX.
Overview
| Finding ID | Version | Rule ID | IA Controls | Severity |
| V-215377 | AIX7-00-003072 | SV-215377r958478_rule | Medium |
| Description |
| The discard service is used as a debugging and measurement tool. It sets up a listening socket and ignores data that it receives. This is a /dev/null service and is obsolete. This can be used in DoS attacks and therefore, must be disabled to prevent attacks. |
| STIG | Date |
| IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide | 2024-08-16 |
Details
| Check Text (C-16575r294582_chk) |
| From the command prompt, execute the following command: # grep "^discard[[:blank:]]" /etc/inetd.conf If there is any output from the command, this is a finding. |
| Fix Text (F-16573r294583_fix) |
| In "/etc/inetd.conf", comment out the "discard" entries by running commands: # chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'tcp' # chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'udp' Restart inetd: # refresh -s inetd |