4.6 Ensure Symbolic Links are Disabled

Information

The symbolic-links and skip-symbolic-links options for MySQL determine whether symbolic link support is available. When use of symbolic links are enabled, they have different effects depending on the host platform. When symbolic links are disabled, then symbolic links stored in files or entries in tables are not used by the database.

Rationale:

Prevents symbolic links being used for data base files. This is especially important when MySQL is executing as root as arbitrary files may be overwritten. The symbolic-links option might allow someone to direct actions by to MySQL server to other files and/or directories.

Solution

Perform the following actions to remediate this setting:

Open the MySQL configuration file (my.cnf)

Locate skip-symbolic-links in the configuration

Set the skip-symbolic-links to YES

Note: If skip-symbolic-links does not exist, add it to the configuration file in the mysqld section.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3859

Item Details

Category: PLANNING, SYSTEM AND SERVICES ACQUISITION

References: 800-53|PL-8, 800-53|SA-8, CSCv7|13

Plugin: MySQLDB

Control ID: 78674230af592ce5ad0d1ed68a63343189d9cf07f2d13f42da8a46179c0139b5