Vulnerability Discussion

The FTP service provides an unencrypted remote access that does not provide for the confidentiality and integrity of user passwords or the remote session. If a privileged user were to log on using this service, the privileged user password could be compromised. SSH or other encrypted file transfer methods must be used in place of this service.

Removing the "vsftpd" package decreases the risk of accidental activation.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000074-GPOS-00042, SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227

Check

Verify that RHEL 9 does not have a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server package installed with the following command:

$ rpm -q vsftpd

package vsftpd is not installed

If the "ftp" package is installed, this is a finding.

Fix

The ftp package can be removed with the following command (using vsftpd as an example):

$ sudo dnf remove vsftpd