NixOS must implement nonexecutable data to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.
An XCCDF Rule
Description
Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in nonexecutable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can either be hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Examples of attacks are buffer overflow attacks. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00192, SRG-OS-000132-GPOS-00067
- ID
- SV-268160r1039368_rule
- Version
- ANIX-00-001660
- Severity
- Medium
- References
- Updated
Remediation Templates
A Manual Procedure
Configure NixOS to prevent internal kernel addresses from being leaked by editing /etc/nixos/configuration.nix to add the following:
boot.kernel.sysctl = {
"kernel.kptr_restrict" = 1;
};