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Guide to the Secure Configuration of Ubuntu 16.04

Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark

  • 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 timeout value greater than 0, the system will wait the ...
    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>. To check the configuration value for <code>CON...
    Rule Low 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 build kernel is available at <code>/boot/config-*</cod...
    Rule Medium 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 the virtual address where the kernel image is map...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Randomize the kernel memory sections

    Randomizes the base virtual address of kernel memory sections (physical memory mapping, vmalloc &amp; vmemmap). This configuration is available from kernel 4.8, but may be available if backported b...
    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 compiler with -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern supp...
    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 or other transports made available to the process ...
    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 filtering polices. The configuration that was used ...
    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 available at <code>/boot/config-*</code>. To check th...
    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 available at <code>/boot/config-*</code>. To ...
    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 discretionary access controls. The module will limit the use o...
    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 being able to connect to your computer during an ongoi...
    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 can be defended against by unmapping the kernel when...
    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 vsyscall. With this option set to N, offending pro...
    Rule Low Severity
  • Ensure rsyslog is Installed

    Rsyslog is installed by default. The rsyslog package can be installed with the following command:
     $ apt-get install rsyslog
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Enable rsyslog Service

    The <code>rsyslog</code> service provides syslog-style logging by default on Ubuntu 16.04. The <code>rsyslog</code> service can be enabled with the following command: <pre>$ sudo systemctl enable ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Verify iptables Enabled

    The iptables service can be enabled with the following command:
    $ sudo systemctl enable iptables.service
    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 support both local and remote logging. Couple this uti...
    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>adm</code>. These log files are determined by the second part of each Rule line in <code>/etc/rsyslog.conf</code> and ty...
    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 the second part of each Rule line in <code>/etc/r...
    Rule Medium Severity

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