STIGUI
V-253131CAT II — Medium severitySV-253131r991589_rule

TOSS must prevent IPv6 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages from being accepted.

Rule version TOSS-04-040900 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages modify the host's route table and are unauthenticated. An illicit ICMP redirect message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack.

Check

Verify TOSS will not accept IPv6 ICMP redirect messages.

Note: If IPv6 is disabled on the system, this requirement is Not Applicable.

Check the value of the default "accept_redirects" variables with the following command:

$ sudo sysctl net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_redirects

net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

If the returned line does not have a value of "0", a line is not returned, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure TOSS to prevent IPv6 ICMP redirect messages from being accepted with the following command:

$ sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_redirects=0

If "0" is not the system's default value then add or update the following line in the appropriate file under "/etc/sysctl.d":

net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_redirects=0

Identifiers

Group ID
V-253131
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-253131r991589_rule
Check ID
C-56584r825063_chk
Fix ID
F-56534r825064_fix