The chargen daemon must be disabled on AIX.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-215376 | SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049 | AIX7-00-003071 | SV-215376r958478_rule | 2026-02-06 | 3 |
Description
This service is used to test the integrity of TCP/IP packets arriving at the destination.
This chargen service is a character generator service and is used for testing the integrity of TCP/IP packets arriving at the destination. An attacker may spoof packets between machines running the chargen service and thus provide an opportunity for DoS attacks. Disable this service to prevent attacks unless testing the network.
ℹ️ Check
From the command prompt, execute the following command:
# grep "^chargen[[:blank:]]" /etc/inetd.conf
If there is any output from the command, this is a finding.
✔️ Fix
In "/etc/inetd.conf", comment out the "chargen" entries by running commands:
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'chargen' -p 'tcp'
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'chargen' -p 'udp'
Restart inetd:
# refresh -s inetd