Free and open-source vulnerability scanner

Mageni eases for you the vulnerability scanning, assessment, and management process. It is free and open-source.

Install Now

Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux

App screenshot

Check for Chargen Service (TCP)

Information

Severity

Severity

Medium

Family

Family

Useless services

CVSSv2 Base

CVSSv2 Base

5.0

CVSSv2 Vector

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Solution Type

Solution Type

Mitigation

Created

Created

18 years ago

Modified

Modified

4 years ago

Summary

The remote host is running a 'chargen' service. Description : When contacted, chargen responds with some random characters (something like all the characters in the alphabet in a row). When contacted via TCP, it will continue spewing characters until the client closes the connection. The purpose of this service was to mostly to test the TCP/IP protocol by itself, to make sure that all the packets were arriving at their destination unaltered. It is unused these days, so it is suggested you disable it, as an attacker may use it to set up an attack against this host, or against a third party host using this host as a relay.

Solution

Solution

- Under Unix systems, comment out the 'chargen' line in /etc/inetd.conf and restart the inetd process - Under Windows systems, set the following registry keys to 0 : HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SimpTCP\Parameters\EnableTcpChargen HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SimpTCP\Parameters\EnableUdpChargen Then launch cmd.exe and type : net stop simptcp net start simptcp To restart the service.