As part of your system hardening activities, prevent the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol from loading on your vRealize appliances by default. Potential attackers can exploit this protocol to compromise your system.

Binding the RDS protocol to the network stack increases the attack surface of the host. Unprivileged local processes might cause the kernel to dynamically load a protocol handler by using the protocol to open a socket.

Procedure

  1. Open the /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf file in a text editor.
  2. Ensure that the install rds /bin/false line appears in this file.
  3. Save the file and close it.