PHTN-40-000160 The Photon operating system must implement address space layout randomization to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.

Information

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.

Solution

Navigate to and open:

/etc/sysctl.d/zz-stig-hardening.conf

Add or update the following line:

kernel.randomize_va_space=2

At the command line, run the following command to load the new configuration:

# /sbin/sysctl --load /etc/sysctl.d/zz-stig-hardening.conf

Note: If the file zz-stig-hardening.conf does not exist, it must be created.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_VMW_vSphere_8-0_Y24M08_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND INFORMATION INTEGRITY

References: 800-53|SI-16, CAT|II, CCI|CCI-002824, Rule-ID|SV-258848r958928_rule, STIG-ID|PHTN-40-000160, Vuln-ID|V-258848

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 9a25bcfbdcaec144034b8c7f3d42e5d08e2abef52e5ad6f193e8c3ac45887fcb