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Verify Ownership of /etc/hosts.allow

An XCCDF Rule

Description

To properly set the owner of /etc/hosts.allow, run the command: 
$ sudo chown root /etc/hosts.allow

Rationale

The /etc/hosts.allow file is used to control access of clients to daemons in the server. Insecure groupownership of this file could allow users to grant clients unrestricted access or no access at all to services in the server.

ID
xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_rule_file_owner_etc_hosts_allow
Severity
Medium
References
Updated

Remediation Templates

An Ansible Snippet

- name: Test for existence /etc/hosts.allow
  stat:
    path: /etc/hosts.allow
  register: file_exists
  when: ansible_virtualization_type not in ["docker", "lxc", "openvz", "podman", "container"]
  tags:

A Shell Script

# Remediation is applicable only in certain platforms
if [ ! -f /.dockerenv ] && [ ! -f /run/.containerenv ]; then
chown 0 /etc/hosts.allow

else
    >&2 echo 'Remediation is not applicable, nothing was done'
fi