Details

chargen is a network service that responds with 0 to 512 ASCII characters for each

connection it receives. This service is intended for debugging and testing purposes. It is

recommended that this service be disabled.

*Rationale*

Disabling this service will reduce the remote attack surface of the system.

Solution

Remove or comment out any chargen lines in /etc/inetd.conf-
#chargen stream tcp nowait root internal

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/91

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

References

• 800-53|CM-7b.
• CSCv6|9.1

Source

• Tenable.com/audits