Most of time vulnerability scanners complains about the TRACE method has been enabled your your web server.
By default it is enabled in Apache. If you want to test if it is really enabled on your server you just have to telnet on the port your web server is running and request for “TRACE / HTTP/1.0” if you get a positive reply it means TRACE is enabled on your system.
You will get the some output from telnet like below:
# telnet 127.0.0.1 80 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'. TRACE / HTTP/1.0 Host: looklinux Any text entered here will be echoed back in the response <- ENTER twice to finish HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:39:36 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.6 (Debian) PHP/4.4.4-9 mod_ruby/1.2.6 Ruby/1.8.6(2007-06-07) Connection: close Content-Type: message/http TRACE / HTTP/1.0 Host: looklinux Any text entered here will be echoed back in the response Connection closed by foreign host.
It is recommended to disable this using rewrite rules in .htaccess file like below:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
RewriteRule .* - [F]
You can also put above lines in your apache config file.
In Apache version 2.0.55+ for apache2 this can be done very easily because there is a new apache variable that controls if TRACE method is enabled or not.
TraceEnable off
You will need to add in the main server config file and default is enabled (on). You will get the 403 Forbidden error if you do TraceEnable off.
After adding the above line relaod the apache service to apply changes.
# server httpd reload
Now do the telnet again and you will get the some output like below:
#telnet 127.0.0.1 80 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'. TRACE / HTTP/1.0 Host: looklinux test... <- ENTER twice HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:38:31 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.6 (Debian) PHP/4.4.4-9 mod_ruby/1.2.6 Ruby/1.8.6(2007-06-07) Content-Length: 320 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>403 Forbidden</title> </head><body> <h1>Forbidden</h1> <p>You don't have permission to access / on this server.</p> <hr> <address>Apache/2.2.6 (Debian) PHP/4.4.4-9 mod_ruby/1.2.6 Ruby/1.8.6(2007-06-07) Server at foo Port 80</address> </body></html> Connection closed by foreign host.
Now above you can see the HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in the output.
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