Linux assessment fails if escape sequences are found in /etc/issue


Product Name

CIS-CAT Pro Assessor v4

Product Version

v4.0.0+

Date

Sep 13, 2023



 

Problem

When running a CIS-CAT Pro Assessor scan against a Linux target system that includes escape sequences in the /etc/issue file, the assessment halts with the following error:

Exception in thread "main" org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; (...) An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x1b) was found in the element content of the document.

These sequences are occasionally used in combination with color or other character formatting.

You can use the file /etc/issue command to verify whether this is the case:

user@server:/etc$ file /etc/issue /etc/issue: ASCII text, with escape sequences

Solution

Temporarily replace or remove any occurrence of the escape character sequence in the /etc/issue file before initiating the assessment. The contents can then be restored after the scan completes.

Keywords; linux Assessor /etc/issue

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