STIGUI
V-258892CAT II — Medium severitySV-258892r991589_rule

The Photon operating system must use a reverse-path filter for IPv4 network traffic.

Rule version PHTN-40-000229 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-26

Discussion

Enabling reverse path filtering drops packets with source addresses that should not have been able to be received on the interface they were received on. It should not be used on systems that are routers for complicated networks but is helpful for end hosts and routers serving small networks.

Check

At the command line, run the following command to verify IPv4 traffic is using a reverse path filter:

# /sbin/sysctl -a --pattern "net.ipv4.conf.(all|default).rp_filter"

Expected result:

net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

If the "rp_filter" kernel parameters are not set to "1", this is a finding.

Fix

Navigate to and open:

/etc/sysctl.d/zz-stig-hardening.conf

Add or update the following lines:

net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

At the command line, run the following command to load the new configuration:

# /sbin/sysctl --load /etc/sysctl.d/zz-stig-hardening.conf

Note: If the file zz-stig-hardening.conf does not exist, it must be created.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-258892
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-258892r991589_rule
Check ID
C-62632r933735_chk
Fix ID
F-62541r933736_fix