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Disable kernel support for MISC binaries

An XCCDF Rule

Description

Enabling CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC makes it possible to plug wrapper-driven binary formats into the kernel. This is specially useful for programs that need an interpreter to run like Java, Python and DOS emulators. Once you have registered such a binary class with the kernel, you can start one of those programs simply by typing in its name at a shell prompt. The configuration that was used to build kernel is available at /boot/config-*. To check the configuration value for CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC, run the following command: grep CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC /boot/config-* Configs with value 'n' are not explicitly set in the file, so either commented lines or no lines should be returned.

warning alert: Warning

There is no remediation for this besides re-compiling the kernel with the appropriate value for the config.

Rationale

This disables arbitrary binary format support and helps reduce attack surface.

ID
xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_rule_kernel_config_binfmt_misc
Severity
Medium
References
Updated