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RHEL 9 must not respond to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echoes sent to a broadcast address.

An XCCDF Rule

Description

Responding to broadcast (ICMP) echoes facilitates network mapping and provides a vector for amplification attacks. Ignoring ICMP echo requests (pings) sent to broadcast or multicast addresses makes the system slightly more difficult to enumerate on the network.

ID
SV-257966r991589_rule
Version
RHEL-09-253055
Severity
Medium
References
Updated

Remediation Templates

A Manual Procedure

Configure RHEL 9 to not respond to IPv4 ICMP echoes sent to a broadcast address.

Add or edit the following line in a single system configuration file, in the "/etc/sysctl.d/" directory:

net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1