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Guide to the Secure Configuration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark

  • Configure auditing of successful file creations

    Ensure that successful attempts to create a file are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## Successful file crea...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of unsuccessful file deletions

    Ensure that unsuccessful attempts to delete a file are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## Unsuccessful file ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of successful file deletions

    Ensure that successful attempts to delete a file are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## Successful file dele...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure immutable Audit login UIDs

    Configure kernel to prevent modification of login UIDs once they are set. Changing login UIDs while this configuration is enforced requires special...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of unsuccessful file modifications

    Ensure that unsuccessful attempts to modify a file are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## Unsuccessful file ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of successful file modifications

    Ensure that successful attempts to modify a file are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## Successful file modi...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of loading and unloading of kernel modules

    Ensure that loading and unloading of kernel modules is audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pre>## These rules watch ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of unsuccessful ownership changes

    Ensure that unsuccessful attempts to change an ownership of files or directories are audited. The following rules configure audit as described abo...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of successful ownership changes

    Ensure that successful attempts to change an ownership of files or directories are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of unsuccessful permission changes

    Ensure that unsuccessful attempts to change file or directory permissions are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above: <pr...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure auditing of successful permission changes

    Ensure that successful attempts to modify permissions of files or directories are audited. The following rules configure audit as described above:...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/grub2/grub.cfg User Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/grub2/grub.cfg</code> should be owned by the <code>root</code> user to prevent destruction or modification of the file. To pr...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure audit according to OSPP requirements

    Configure audit to meet requirements for Operating System Protection Profile (OSPP) v4.2.1. Audit defines groups of rules in <code>/usr/share/doc/...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • AppArmor

    Many security vulnerabilities result from bugs in trusted programs. A trusted program runs with privileges that attackers want to possess. The prog...
    Group
  • AppArmor profiles mode

    enforce - Set all AppArmor profiles to enforce mode
    complain - Set all AppArmor profiles to complain mode
    Value
  • GRUB2 bootloader configuration

    During the boot process, the boot loader is responsible for starting the execution of the kernel and passing options to it. The boot loader allows ...
    Group
  • L1TF vulnerability mitigation

    Defines the L1TF vulneratility mitigations to employ.
    Value
  • MDS vulnerability mitigation

    Defines the MDS vulneratility mitigation to employ.
    Value
  • Confidence level on Hardware Random Number Generator

    Defines the level of trust on the hardware random number generators available in the system and the percentage of entropy to credit.
    Value
  • Spec Store Bypass Mitigation

    This controls how the Speculative Store Bypass (SSB) vulnerability is mitigated.
    Value
  • Disable Recovery Booting

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 systems support an "recovery boot" option that can be used to prevent services from being started. The <code>GRUB_DISABL...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • IOMMU configuration directive

    On x86 architecture supporting VT-d, the IOMMU manages the access control policy between the hardware devices and some of the system critical u...
    Rule Unknown Severity
  • Configure kernel to trust the CPU random number generator

    There exist two ways how to ensure that the Linux kernel trusts the CPU hardware random number generator. If the option is configured during kernel...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure L1 Terminal Fault mitigations

    L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) is a hardware vulnerability which allows unprivileged speculative access to data which is available in the Level 1 Data Ca...
    Rule High Severity
  • Force kernel panic on uncorrected MCEs

    A Machine Check Exception is an error generated by the CPU itdetects an error in itself, memory or I/O devices. These errors may be corrected and g...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Ensure SMAP is not disabled during boot

    The SMAP is used to prevent the supervisor mode from unintentionally reading/writing into memory pages in the user space, it is enabled by default ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Ensure SMEP is not disabled during boot

    The SMEP is used to prevent the supervisor mode from executing user space code, it is enabled by default since Linux kernel 3.0. But it could be di...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Enable Kernel Page-Table Isolation (KPTI)

    To enable Kernel page-table isolation, add the argument <code>pti=on</code> to the default GRUB 2 command line for the Linux operating system. To e...
    Rule Low Severity
  • Configure the confidence in TPM for entropy

    The TPM security chip that is available in most modern systems has a hardware RNG. It is also used to feed the entropy pool, but generally not cred...
    Rule Low Severity
  • Verify /boot/grub2/user.cfg User Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/grub2/user.cfg</code> should be owned by the <code>root</code> user to prevent reading or modification of the file. To proper...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable merging of slabs with similar size

    The kernel may merge similar slabs together to reduce overhead and increase cache hotness of objects. Disabling merging of slabs keeps the slabs se...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configure Speculative Store Bypass Mitigation

    Certain CPUs are vulnerable to an exploit against a common wide industry wide performance optimization known as Speculative Store Bypass (SSB). In...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Enforce Spectre v2 mitigation

    Spectre V2 is an indirect branch poisoning attack that can lead to data leakage. An exploit for Spectre V2 tricks the indirect branch predictor int...
    Rule High Severity
  • Ensure debug-shell service is not enabled during boot

    systemd's <code>debug-shell</code> service is intended to diagnose systemd related boot issues with various <code>systemctl</code> commands. Once e...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disable vsyscalls

    To disable use of virtual syscalls, add the argument <code>vsyscall=none</code> to the default GRUB 2 command line for the Linux operating system. ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Non-UEFI GRUB2 bootloader configuration

    Non-UEFI GRUB2 bootloader configuration
    Group
  • Verify /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Group Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/grub2/grub.cfg</code> should be group-owned by the <code>root</code> group to prevent destruction or modification of the file....
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Permissions

    File permissions for <code>/boot/grub2/grub.cfg</code> should be set to 600. To properly set the permissions of <code>/boot/grub2/grub.cfg</code>,...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/grub2/user.cfg Permissions

    File permissions for <code>/boot/grub2/user.cfg</code> should be set to 600. To properly set the permissions of <code>/boot/grub2/user.cfg</code>,...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Key and certificate for kernel module signing

    The private key and certificate to use when signing modules during kernel build process. On systems where the OpenSSL ENGINE_pkcs11 is functional —...
    Value
  • Set the Boot Loader Admin Username to a Non-Default Value

    The grub2 boot loader should have a superuser account and password protection enabled to protect boot-time settings. <br><br> To maximize the prote...
    Rule High Severity
  • Boot Loader Is Not Installed On Removeable Media

    The system must not allow removable media to be used as the boot loader. Remove alternate methods of booting the system from removable media. <code...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Set Boot Loader Password in grub2

    The grub2 boot loader should have a superuser account and password protection enabled to protect boot-time settings. <br><br> Since plaintext passw...
    Rule High Severity
  • UEFI GRUB2 bootloader configuration

    UEFI GRUB2 bootloader configuration
    Group
  • Verify the UEFI Boot Loader grub.cfg Group Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg</code> should be group-owned by the <code>root</code> group to prevent destruction or modification of ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg Group Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg</code> should be group-owned by the <code>root</code> group to prevent reading or modification of the ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify the UEFI Boot Loader grub.cfg User Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg</code> should be owned by the <code>root</code> user to prevent destruction or modification of the fil...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg User Ownership

    The file <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg</code> should be owned by the <code>root</code> user to prevent reading or modification of the file. ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify the UEFI Boot Loader grub.cfg Permissions

    File permissions for <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg</code> should be set to 700. To properly set the permissions of <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redha...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg Permissions

    File permissions for <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg</code> should be set to 600. To properly set the permissions of <code>/boot/efi/EFI/redha...
    Rule Medium Severity

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