The discard daemon must be disabled on AIX.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-215377 | SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049 | AIX7-00-003072 | SV-215377r958478_rule | 2026-02-06 | 3 |
Description
The discard service is used as a debugging and measurement tool. It sets up a listening socket and ignores data that it receives. This is a /dev/null service and is obsolete. This can be used in DoS attacks and therefore, must be disabled to prevent attacks.
ℹ️ Check
From the command prompt, execute the following command:
# grep "^discard[[:blank:]]" /etc/inetd.conf
If there is any output from the command, this is a finding.
✔️ Fix
In "/etc/inetd.conf", comment out the "discard" entries by running commands:
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'tcp'
# chsubserver -r inetd -C /etc/inetd.conf -d -v 'discard' -p 'udp'
Restart inetd:
# refresh -s inetd