Guide to the Secure Configuration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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Kernel panic oops
Enable the kernel to panic when it oopses. This has the same effect as setting oops=panic on the kernel command line. The configuration that was u...Rule Medium Severity -
Kernel panic timeout
Set the timeout value (in seconds) until a reboot occurs when the kernel panics. A timeout of 0 configures the system to wait forever. With a timeo...Rule Medium Severity -
Disable support for /proc/kkcore
Provides a virtual ELF core file of the live kernel. The configuration that was used to build kernel is available at <code>/boot/config-*</code>. ...Rule Low Severity -
Randomize the address of the kernel image (KASLR)
In support of Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR), this randomizes the physical address at which the kernel image is decompressed and...Rule Medium Severity -
Randomize the kernel memory sections
Randomizes the base virtual address of kernel memory sections (physical memory mapping, vmalloc & vmemmap). This configuration is available fro...Rule Medium Severity -
Perform full reference count validation
Enabling this switches the refcounting infrastructure from a fast unchecked atomic_t implementation to a fully state checked implementation, which ...Rule Medium Severity -
Avoid speculative indirect branches in kernel
Compile kernel with the retpoline compiler options to guard against kernel-to-user data leaks by avoiding speculative indirect branches. Requires a...Rule Medium Severity -
Detect stack corruption on calls to schedule()
This option checks for a stack overrun on calls to schedule(). If the stack end location is found to be overwritten always panic as the content of ...Rule Medium Severity -
User a virtually-mapped stack
Enable this to use virtually-mapped kernel stacks with guard pages. This configuration is available from kernel 4.9. The configuration that was us...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable seccomp to safely compute untrusted bytecode
This kernel feature is useful for number crunching applications that may need to compute untrusted bytecode during their execution. By using pipes ...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable use of Berkeley Packet Filter with seccomp
Enable tasks to build secure computing environments defined in terms of Berkeley Packet Filter programs which implement task-defined system call fi...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable different security models
This allows you to choose different security modules to be configured into your kernel. The configuration that was used to build kernel is availab...Rule Medium Severity -
Disable mutable hooks
Ensure kernel structures associated with LSMs are always mapped as read-only after system boot. The configuration that was used to build kernel is...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable Yama support
This enables support for LSM module Yama, which extends DAC support with additional system-wide security settings beyond regular Linux discretionar...Rule Medium Severity -
Harden slab freelist metadata
This feature protects integrity of the allocator's metadata. This configuration is available from kernel 4.14. The configuration that was used to ...Rule Medium Severity -
Disable x86 vsyscall emulation
Disabling it is roughly equivalent to booting with vsyscall=none, except that it will also disable the helpful warning if a program tries to use a ...Rule Low Severity -
Kernel GCC plugin configuration
Contains rules that check the configuration of GCC plugins used by the compilerGroup -
Disallow merge of slab caches
For reduced kernel memory fragmentation, slab caches can be merged when they share the same size and other characteristics. This carries a risk of ...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable SLUB debugging support
SLUB has extensive debug support features and this allows the allocator validation checking to be enabled. The configuration that was used to buil...Rule Medium Severity -
Stack Protector buffer overlow detection
This feature puts, at the beginning of functions, a canary value on the stack just before the return address, and validates the value just before a...Rule Medium Severity -
Strong Stack Protector
This features adds canary logic protection to more kinds of vulnerable functions than CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR, but not to all functions so that perfo...Rule Medium Severity -
Make the kernel text and rodata read-only
When set, kernel text and rodata memory will be made read-only, and non-text memory will be made non-executable. This configuration is available fr...Rule Medium Severity -
Make the module text and rodata read-only
When set, module text and rodata memory will be made read-only, and non-text memory will be made non-executable. This configuration is available fr...Rule Medium Severity -
Enable TCP/IP syncookie support
Normal TCP/IP networking is open to an attack known as SYN flooding. It is denial-of-service attack that prevents legitimate remote users from bein...Rule Medium Severity -
Unmap kernel when running in userspace (aka KAISER)
Speculation attacks against some high-performance processors can be used to bypass MMU permission checks and leak kernel data to userspace. This ca...Rule Medium Severity -
daemons_use_tcp_wrapper SELinux Boolean
default - Default SELinux boolean setting.
on - SELinux boolean is enabled.
off - SELinux boolean is disabled.Value -
Generate some entropy during boot and runtime
Instrument some kernel code to extract some entropy from both original and artificially created program state. This will help especially embedded s...Rule Medium Severity -
Randomize layout of sensitive kernel structures
Randomize at compile-time the layouts of structures that are entirely function pointers (and have not been manually annotated with __no_randomize_l...Rule Medium Severity -
Poison kernel stack before returning from syscalls
This option makes the kernel erase the kernel stack before returning from system calls. This has the effect of leaving the stack initialized to the...Rule Medium Severity -
Force initialization of variables containing userspace addresses
While the kernel is built with warnings enabled for any missed stack variable initializations, this warning is silenced for anything passed by refe...Rule Medium Severity -
zero-init everything passed by reference
Zero-initialize any stack variables that may be passed by reference and had not already been explicitly initialized. This configuration is availabl...Rule Medium Severity -
Configure Syslog
The syslog service has been the default Unix logging mechanism for many years. It has a number of downsides, including inconsistent log format, lac...Group -
Ensure rsyslog-gnutls is installed
TLS protocol support for rsyslog is installed. The <code>rsyslog-gnutls</code> package can be installed with the following command: <pre> $ sudo d...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure rsyslog is Installed
Rsyslog is installed by default. Thersyslogpackage can be installed with the following command:$ sudo dnf install rsyslog
Rule Medium Severity -
Enable rsyslog Service
The <code>rsyslog</code> service provides syslog-style logging by default on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. The <code>rsyslog</code> service can be e...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Proper Configuration of Log Files
The file <code>/etc/rsyslog.conf</code> controls where log message are written. These are controlled by lines called <i>rules</i>, which consist of...Group -
User who owns log files
Specify user owner of all logfiles specified in/etc/rsyslog.conf.Value -
Ensure cron Is Logging To Rsyslog
Cron logging must be implemented to spot intrusions or trace cron job status. If <code>cron</code> is not logging to <code>rsyslog</code>, it can b...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Rsyslog Authenticates Off-Loaded Audit Records
Rsyslogd is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to suppo...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Rsyslog Encrypts Off-Loaded Audit Records
Rsyslogd is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to suppo...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Rsyslog Encrypts Off-Loaded Audit Records
Rsyslogd is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to suppo...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Log Files Are Owned By Appropriate User
The owner of all log files written by <code>rsyslog</code> should be <code>root</code>. These log files are determined by the second part of each...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure Logrotate Runs Periodically
The <code>logrotate</code> utility allows for the automatic rotation of log files. The frequency of rotation is specified in <code>/etc/logrotate....Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure System Log Files Have Correct Permissions
The file permissions for all log files written by <code>rsyslog</code> should be set to 640, or more restrictive. These log files are determined by...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure logging is configured
The <code>/etc/rsyslog.conf</code> and <code>/etc/rsyslog.d/*.conf</code> files specifies rules for logging and which files are to be used to log c...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure remote access methods are monitored in Rsyslog
Logging of remote access methods must be implemented to help identify cyber attacks and ensure ongoing compliance with remote access policies are b...Rule Medium Severity -
systemd-journald
systemd-journald is a system service that collects and stores logging data. It creates and maintains structured, indexed journals based on logging ...Group -
Enable systemd-journald Service
The <code>systemd-journald</code> service is an essential component of systemd. The <code>systemd-journald</code> service can be enabled with the ...Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure journald is configured to compress large log files
The journald system can compress large log files to avoid fill the system disk.Rule Medium Severity -
Ensure journald is configured to send logs to rsyslog
Data from journald may be stored in volatile memory or persisted locally. Utilities exist to accept remote export of journald logs.Rule Medium Severity
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