Cis Tomcat8 V100 2.6

2.6 Turn off TRACE (Scored)

Description

The HTTP TRACE verb provides debugging and diagnostics information for a given request.

Rationale

Diagnostic information, such as that found in the response to a TRACE request, often contains sensitive information that may be useful to an attacker. By preventing Tomcat from providing this information, the risk of leaking sensitive information to a potential attacker is reduced.

Audit Procedure

1. Locate all Connector elements in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml.
2. Ensure each Connector does not have a allowTrace attribute or if the allowTrace attribute is not set true.

Note: Perform the above for each application hosted within Tomcat. Per application instances of web.xml can be found at $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/<APP_NAME>/WEBINF/web.xml

Remediation

1. Set the allowTrace attributes to each Connector specified in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml to false.

<Connector ... allowTrace="false" />

Alternatively, ensure the allowTrace attribute for each Connector specified in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml is absent.

Default Value

Tomcat does not allow the TRACE HTTP verb by default. Tomcat will only allow TRACE if the allowTrace attribute is present and set to true.

References

1. http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/config/http.html

CIS Controls

• Not mapped in this benchmark version

Profile Applicability

• Level 1