ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER must be set to true.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-223005 | SRG-APP-000516-AS-000237 | TCAT-AS-001690 | SV-223005r1135509_rule | 2026-02-25 | 3 |
Description
Some clients try to guess the character encoding of text media when the mandated default of ISO-8859-1 should be used. Some browsers will interpret as UTF-7 when the characters are safe for ISO-8859-1. This can create the potential for a XSS attack. To defend against this, enforce_encoding_in_get_writer must be set to true.
ℹ️ Check
From the Tomcat server as a privileged user, run the following command:
sudo grep -i enforce_encoding /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service
If there are no results, or if the org.apache.catalina.connector.Response.ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER is not ="true", this is a finding.
✔️ Fix
From the Tomcat server as a privileged user:
Edit the /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service file, and either add or edit the org.apache.catalina.connector.Response.ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER setting.
Set the org.apache.catalina.connector.Response.ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER=true
EXAMPLE:
Environment='CATALINA_OPTS -Dorg.apache.catalina.connector.Response.ENFORCE_ENCODING_IN_GET_WRITER=true'
Restart the Tomcat server:
sudo systemctl restart tomcat
sudo systemctl daemon-reload