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Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Rules and Groups employed by this XCCDF Profile

  • Cron and At Daemons

    The cron and at services are used to allow commands to be executed at a later time. The cron service is required by almost all systems to perform necessary maintenance tasks, while at may or may no...
    Group
  • Enable cron Service

    The <code>crond</code> service is used to execute commands at preconfigured times. It is required by almost all systems to perform necessary maintenance tasks, such as notifying root of system acti...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • NFS and RPC

    The Network File System is a popular distributed filesystem for the Unix environment, and is very widely deployed. This section discusses the circumstances under which it is possible to disable NF...
    Group
  • Configure NFS Servers

    The steps in this section are appropriate for systems which operate as NFS servers.
    Group
  • Use Kerberos Security on All Exports

    Using Kerberos on all exported mounts prevents a malicious client or user from impersonating a system user. To cryptography authenticate users to the NFS server, add <code>sec=krb5:krb5i:krb5p</cod...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Obsolete Services

    This section discusses a number of network-visible services which have historically caused problems for system security, and for which disabling or severely limiting the service has been the best a...
    Group
  • Xinetd

    The <code>xinetd</code> service acts as a dedicated listener for some network services (mostly, obsolete ones) and can be used to provide access controls and perform some logging. It has been large...
    Group
  • Uninstall xinetd Package

    The xinetd package can be removed with the following command:
    $ sudo yum erase xinetd
    Rule Low Severity
  • Disable xinetd Service

    The xinetd service can be disabled with the following command:
    $ sudo systemctl mask --now xinetd.service
    Rule Medium Severity
  • NIS

    The Network Information Service (NIS), also known as 'Yellow Pages' (YP), and its successor NIS+ have been made obsolete by Kerberos, LDAP, and other modern centralized authentication services. NIS...
    Group
  • Remove NIS Client

    The Network Information Service (NIS), formerly known as Yellow Pages, is a client-server directory service protocol used to distribute system configuration files. The NIS client (<code>ypbind</cod...
    Rule Unknown Severity
  • Uninstall ypserv Package

    The ypserv package can be removed with the following command:
    $ sudo yum erase ypserv
    Rule High Severity
  • Disable ypbind Service

    The <code>ypbind</code> service, which allows the system to act as a client in a NIS or NIS+ domain, should be disabled. The <code>ypbind</code> service can be disabled with the following command:...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Rlogin, Rsh, and Rexec

    The Berkeley r-commands are legacy services which allow cleartext remote access and have an insecure trust model.
    Group
  • Uninstall rsh-server Package

    The rsh-server package can be removed with the following command:
    $ sudo yum erase rsh-server
    Rule High Severity
  • Uninstall rsh Package

    The rsh package contains the client commands for the rsh services
    Rule Unknown Severity
  • Disable rexec Service

    The <code>rexec</code> service, which is available with the <code>rsh-server</code> package and runs as a service through xinetd or separately as a systemd socket, should be disabled. If using xine...
    Rule High Severity
  • Disable rlogin Service

    The <code>rlogin</code> service, which is available with the <code>rsh-server</code> package and runs as a service through xinetd or separately as a systemd socket, should be disabled. If using xin...
    Rule High Severity
  • Disable rsh Service

    The <code>rsh</code> service, which is available with the <code>rsh-server</code> package and runs as a service through xinetd or separately as a systemd socket, should be disabled. If using xinetd...
    Rule High Severity
  • Remove Rsh Trust Files

    The files <code>/etc/hosts.equiv</code> and <code>~/.rhosts</code> (in each user's home directory) list remote hosts and users that are trusted by the local system when using the rshd daemon. To re...
    Rule High Severity
  • Chat/Messaging Services

    The talk software makes it possible for users to send and receive messages across systems through a terminal session.
    Group
  • Uninstall talk-server Package

    The talk-server package can be removed with the following command:
     $ sudo yum erase talk-server
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Uninstall talk Package

    The <code>talk</code> package contains the client program for the Internet talk protocol, which allows the user to chat with other users on different systems. Talk is a communication program which ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Telnet

    The telnet protocol does not provide confidentiality or integrity for information transmitted on the network. This includes authentication information such as passwords. Organizations which use tel...
    Group
  • Uninstall telnet-server Package

    The telnet-server package can be removed with the following command:
    $ sudo yum erase telnet-server
    Rule High Severity
  • Remove telnet Clients

    The telnet client allows users to start connections to other systems via the telnet protocol.
    Rule Low Severity
  • Disable telnet Service

    Make sure that the activation of the <code>telnet</code> service on system boot is disabled. The <code>telnet</code> socket can be disabled with the following command: <pre>$ sudo systemctl mask -...
    Rule High Severity
  • Network Routing

    A router is a very desirable target for a potential adversary because they fulfill a variety of infrastructure networking roles such as access to network segments, gateways to other networks, filt...
    Group
  • Disable Quagga if Possible

    If Quagga was installed and activated, but the system does not need to act as a router, then it should be disabled and removed.
    Group
  • Disable Quagga Service

    The zebra service can be disabled with the following command:
    $ sudo systemctl mask --now zebra.service
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SSH Server

    The SSH protocol is recommended for remote login and remote file transfer. SSH provides confidentiality and integrity for data exchanged between two systems, as well as server authentication, throu...
    Group
  • Configure OpenSSH Server if Necessary

    If the system needs to act as an SSH server, then certain changes should be made to the OpenSSH daemon configuration file <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code>. The following recommendations can be app...
    Group
  • Set SSH Client Alive Count Max to zero

    The SSH server sends at most <code>ClientAliveCountMax</code> messages during a SSH session and waits for a response from the SSH client. The option <code>ClientAliveInterval</code> configures time...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable Host-Based Authentication

    SSH's cryptographic host-based authentication is more secure than <code>.rhosts</code> authentication. However, it is not recommended that hosts unilaterally trust one another, even within an organ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Allow Only SSH Protocol 2

    Only SSH protocol version 2 connections should be permitted. The default setting in <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code> is correct, and can be verified by ensuring that the following line appears: <p...
    Rule High Severity
  • Disable Compression Or Set Compression to delayed

    Compression is useful for slow network connections over long distances but can cause performance issues on local LANs. If use of compression is required, it should be enabled only after a user has ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable SSH Access via Empty Passwords

    Disallow SSH login with empty passwords. The default SSH configuration disables logins with empty passwords. The appropriate configuration is used if no value is set for <code>PermitEmptyPasswords<...
    Rule High Severity
  • Disable GSSAPI Authentication

    Unless needed, SSH should not permit extraneous or unnecessary authentication mechanisms like GSSAPI. <br> The default SSH configuration disallows authentications based on GSSAPI. The appropriate c...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable Kerberos Authentication

    Unless needed, SSH should not permit extraneous or unnecessary authentication mechanisms like Kerberos. <br> The default SSH configuration disallows authentication validation through Kerberos. The ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable SSH Support for Rhosts RSA Authentication

    SSH can allow authentication through the obsolete rsh command through the use of the authenticating user's SSH keys. This should be disabled. <br><br> To ensure this behavior is disabled, add or co...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable SSH Root Login

    The root user should never be allowed to login to a system directly over a network. To disable root login via SSH, add or correct the following line in <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code>: <pre>Pe...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Do Not Allow SSH Environment Options

    Ensure that users are not able to override environment variables of the SSH daemon. <br> The default SSH configuration disables environment processing. The appropriate configuration is used if no v...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Enable Use of Strict Mode Checking

    SSHs <code>StrictModes</code> option checks file and ownership permissions in the user's home directory <code>.ssh</code> folder before accepting login. If world- writable permissions are found, lo...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Enable SSH Warning Banner

    To enable the warning banner and ensure it is consistent across the system, add or correct the following line in <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code>: <pre>Banner /etc/issue</pre> Another section c...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Use Only FIPS 140-2 Validated Ciphers

    Limit the ciphers to those algorithms which are FIPS-approved. Counter (CTR) mode is also preferred over cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode. The following line in <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code> de...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Use Only FIPS 140-2 Validated MACs

    Limit the MACs to those hash algorithms which are FIPS-approved. The following line in <code>/etc/ssh/sshd_config</code> demonstrates use of FIPS-approved MACs: <pre>MACs hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-2...
    Rule Medium Severity

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