Details

The web server’s private key is used to prove the identity of the server to clients and securely exchange the shared secret key used to encrypt communications between the web server and clients.

By gaining access to the private key, an attacker can pretend to be an authorized server and decrypt the SSL traffic between a client and the web server.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Determine the location of the ‘HTTPD_ROOT’ directory and the ‘httpd.conf’ file:

# httpd -V | egrep -i ‘httpd_root|server_config_file’
-D HTTPD_ROOT=’/etc/httpd’
-D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE=’conf/httpd.conf’

Based on the ‘ SSLCertificateKeyFile’ directive path, configure the Apache web server to ensure only authenticated and authorized users can access the web server’s private key.

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Apache_Server_2-4_UNIX_Y22M01_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Identification and Authentication.This control applies to the following type of system Unix.

References

• 800-53|IA-5(2)(b)
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000186
• Rule-ID|SV-214287r612241_rule
• STIG-ID|AS24-U2-000390
• STIG-Legacy|SV-102875
• STIG-Legacy|V-92787
• Vuln-ID|V-214287

Source

• Tenable.com/audits