Restrict access to Tomcat catalina.policy

MediumLevel 1Automatedtomcat

Description

The catalina.policy file is used to configure security policies for Tomcat. It is recommended that access to this file has the proper permissions to properly protect from unauthorized changes. $CATALINA_BASE/conf/catalina.policy must not match -perm /o+rwx,g+rwx,u+x and must be owned by $TOMCAT_OWNER:$TOMCAT_GROUP; expects 0 findings. Reads $CATALINA_BASE (default /opt/tomcat) and $CATALINA_HOME (default: $CATALINA_BASE); set them for packaged installs (e.g. CATALINA_BASE=/var/lib/tomcat10, CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/tomcat10). XML comments are ignored. The expected owner/group are tomcat_admin:tomcat as in the benchmark; override with TOMCAT_OWNER / TOMCAT_GROUP.

How it is checked

Audit method: Shell command

shell

B=${CATALINA_BASE:-/opt/tomcat}; H=${CATALINA_HOME:-$B}; O=${TOMCAT_OWNER:-tomcat_admin}; G=${TOMCAT_GROUP:-tomcat}; x(){ [ -r "$1" ] || return 1; awk 'BEGIN{RS="<!--"} NR==1{print;next} {i=index($0,"-->"); if(i) print substr($0,i+3)}' "$1" | tr '\n\t\r' '   ' | tr '<' '\n'; }; p="$B/conf/catalina.policy"; [ -e "$p" ] || exit 1; find -L "$p" -maxdepth 0 \( -perm /o+rwx,g+rwx,u+x -o ! -user "$O" -o ! -group "$G" \) -print 2>/dev/null | wc -l

Expected output: 0

How it is fixed

Fix method: Guidance or infrastructure patch

chown tomcat_admin:tomcat $CATALINA_BASE/conf/catalina.policy && chmod 600 $CATALINA_BASE/conf/catalina.policy. Restart Tomcat afterwards.

Properties

Operating systems: Any
Tags: tomcatpermissions
Reference: CIS Apache Tomcat 10.1 Benchmark v1.0.0 - 4.9 Restrict access to Tomcat catalina.policy

Check this host

Run this on a machine you are allowed to audit. The scan is read-only.

shell

tmaegis scan --target tomcat