STIGUI
V-214250CAT II — Medium severitySV-214250r1043179_rule

The Apache web server must invalidate session identifiers upon hosted application user logout or other session termination.

Rule version AS24-U1-000460 · STIG v3 · 2026-05-28

Discussion

Captured sessions can be reused in "replay" attacks. This requirement limits the ability of adversaries from capturing and continuing to employ previously valid session IDs.

Session IDs are tokens generated by web applications to uniquely identify an application user's session. Unique session IDs help to reduce predictability of said identifiers. When a user logs out, or when any other session termination event occurs, the web server must terminate the user session to minimize the potential for an attacker to hijack that particular user session.

Satisfies: SRG-APP-000220-WSR-000201, SRG-APP-000295-WSR-000012

Check

Determine the location of the "HTTPD_ROOT" directory and the "httpd.conf" file:

# apachectl -V | egrep -i 'httpd_root|server_config_file' -D HTTPD_ROOT="/etc/httpd" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf"

Note: The apachectl front end is the preferred method for locating the Apache httpd file. For some Linux distributions, "apache2ctl -V" or "httpd -V" can also be used.

Search for the following directive:

"SessionMaxAge"

# cat /<path_to_file>/httpd.conf | grep -i "SessionMaxAge"

Verify the value of "SessionMaxAge" is set to "600" or less.

If the "SessionMaxAge" does not exist or is set to more than "600", this is a finding.

Fix

Determine the location of the "HTTPD_ROOT" directory and the "httpd.conf" file:

# apachectl -V | egrep -i 'httpd_root|server_config_file' -D HTTPD_ROOT="/etc/httpd" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf"

Add the following line to the "httpd.conf" file:

SessionMaxAge 600

Restart Apache: apachectl restart

Identifiers

Group ID
V-214250
Group title
SRG-APP-000220-WSR-000201
Rule ID
SV-214250r1043179_rule
Check ID
C-15464r881431_chk
Fix ID
F-15462r881432_fix