PostgreSQL must maintain the authenticity of communications sessions by guarding against man-in-the-middle attacks that guess at Session ID values.
An XCCDF Rule
Description
<VulnDiscussion>One class of man-in-the-middle, or session hijacking, attack involves the adversary guessing at valid session identifiers based on patterns in identifiers already known. The preferred technique for thwarting guesses at Session IDs is the generation of unique session identifiers using a FIPS-approved random number generator. However, it is recognized that available PostgreSQL products do not all implement the preferred technique yet may have other protections against session hijacking. Therefore, other techniques are acceptable, provided they are demonstrated to be effective.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>
- ID
- SV-233611r961119_rule
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation - Manual Procedure
Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA and PGVER environment variables. See supplementary content APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA and APPENDIX-H for PGVER.
To configure PostgreSQL to use SSL, as a database owner (shown here as "postgres"), edit postgresql.conf:
$ sudo su - postgres
$ vi ${PGDATA?}/postgresql.conf