Details

Leaving sessions open indefinitely is a major security risk. An attacker can easily use an already authenticated session to access the hosted application as the previously authenticated user. By closing sessions after a set period of inactivity, the Apache web server can make certain that those sessions that are not closed through the user logging out of an application are eventually closed.

Acceptable values are 5 minutes for high-value applications, 10 minutes for medium-value applications, and 20 minutes for low-value applications.

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’

Load the ‘Reqtimeout_module’.

Set the ‘RequestReadTimeout’ directive.

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: Access Control.This control applies to the following type of system Unix.

References

• 800-53|AC-12
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-002361
• Rule-ID|SV-214296r612241_rule
• STIG-ID|AS24-U2-000660
• STIG-Legacy|SV-102899
• STIG-Legacy|V-92811
• Vuln-ID|V-214296

Source

• Tenable.com/audits