Security Features Matrix

By Default

Available

Unimplemented

Security Features	RHEL 5	RHEL 6	RHEL 7	RHEL 8	Fedora 31	Fedora 32	Fedora 33	Fedora 34
Configuration
Configurable Firewall	iptables	iptables	iptables	firewalld	firewalld	firewalld	firewalld	firewalld
Signed updates	yum	yum	yum	yum / dnf	yum / dnf	yum / dnf	yum / dnf	yum / dnf
Password hashing	md5crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt
Annotated Binaries	N	N	N	package list	package list	package list	package list	package list
Grub2 Security Modules	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SSH Root Password Disabled	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
File Access Policy Daemon	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Network Time Security	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
Subsystems
Filesystem Capabilities	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
PR_SET_SECCOMP	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
PARSEC	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
Mandatory Access Control
SELinux	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux targeted policy	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux Executable Memory Protection	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux user confinement	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux XACE	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux sandbox	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux Deny Ptrace	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux restricted module loading	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
User namespaces	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/tmp namespace for systemd	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Polyinstantiate /tmp, /var/tmp and user home folders	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Filesystem Encryption
Encrypted LVM	Y	Y	Y	Y	Standard Installer	Standard Installer	Standard Installer	Standard Installer
eCryptfs	Y	Y	N	N	Optional Package	Optional Package	Optional Package	Optional Package
User Space Hardening
Non-Executable Memory (NX)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Built as PIE	package list	package list	package list	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Pointer Obfuscation	Y	Y	Y	Y	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc
Heap Protector	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc
Built with Fortify Source	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Stack Protector	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Strong Stack Protector	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Stack Clash Protection	N	N	glibc	glibc	package list	package list	package list	package list
GLIBCXX Assertions	N	Y	Y	Y	package list	package list	package list	package list
Built with Format Security	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Stack ASLR	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Libs/mmap ASLR	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Exec ASLR	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
brk ASLR	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
VDSO ASLR	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Built with RELRO	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Built with BIND_NOW	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/proc/$pid/maps protection	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Symlink restrictions	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Hardlink restrictions	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
ptrace scope	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Overflow checking in new operator	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Crypto Policy	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Tamper Resistant Logs	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Aarch64 Pointer Authentication	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
Kernel Hardening
0-address protection	Y (since 5/2008)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Block module loading	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/dev/mem protection	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/dev/kmem disabled	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Module RO/NX	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kernel Address Display Restriction	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Blacklist Rare Protocols	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Write-protect kernel .rodata sections	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kernel Stack Protector	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
sVirt labelling	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SYN cookies	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Syscall Filtering	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Secure Boot Support	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Configuration

Configurable Firewall

firewalld provides a dynamically managed firewall with support for network/firewall zones to define the trust level of network. The former firewall model with system-config-firewall/lokkit was static and every change required a complete firewall restart. The firewall daemon on the other hand manages the firewall dynamically and applies changes without restarting the whole firewall. See FirewallD and system-config-firewall for more information.

Signed updates

Each stable RPM package that is published by Fedora Project is signed with a GPG signature. By default, DNF, YUM and the graphical update tools will verify these signatures and refuse to install any packages that are not signed or have bad signatures. You should always verify the signature of a package before you install it. These signatures ensure that the packages you install are what was produced by the Fedora Project and have not been altered (accidentally or maliciously) by any mirror or website that is providing the packages. See this page for more information. [MOVE] We use a number of GPG keys to sign our software packages. The necessary public keys are included in the relevant products and are used to automatically verify software updates. See this page for more information.

Password hashing

The system password used for logging into Fedora is stored in /etc/shadow. Very old style password hashes were based on DES and visible in /etc/passwd. Modern Linux has long since moved to /etc/shadow, and for some time now has used salted MD5-based hashes for password verification (crypt id 1). Since MD5 is considered "broken" for some uses and as computational power available to perform brute-forcing of MD5 increases, modern Fedora versions have proactively moved to using salted SHA-512 based password hashes (crypt id 6), which are orders of magnitude more difficult to brute-force. See the crypt(3) manpage for additional details.

Annotated Binaries

Annotated Binaries store metadata provided directly by the GCC using a compiler plugin. This metadata includes which security hardening protections the binary was built with, which compiler built the binary, and more. This facilitates scripting to check security hardening features on binaries. Read more about Annobin in Fedora and RHEL.

Grub2 Security Modules

grub2 modules "verify", "cryptodisk", and "luks" are now in the EFI build to allow users to optionally guarantee the integrity of boot code either through verification of digital signatures or encryption of the boot partition. Read More.

SSH Root Password Disabled

By default, OpenSSH does not allow remote login to the root account via password. A public SSH key may still be used. This feature helps reduce the attack surface, as the password login was a common target of attacks. Read More. In case of RHEL8, the default setting is "prohibit-password", which allows remote login with public key authentication Read More.

File Access Policy Daemon

The File Access Policy Daemon (fapolicyd) software framework introduces a form of application whitelisting and blacklisting based on a user-defined policy. The application whitelisting feature provides one of the most efficient ways to prevent running untrusted and possibly malicious applications on the system. An application is trusted when it is properly installed by the system package manager, and therefore it is registered in the system RPM database. The fapolicyd daemon uses the RPM database as a list of trusted binaries and scripts. The fapolicyd YUM plugin registers any system update that is handled by the YUM package manager. The plugin notifies the fapolicyd daemon about changes in this database. An installation using the rpm utility requires a manual refresh of the database, and other ways of adding applications require the creation of custom rules and restarting the fapolicyd service.

For more information see this blog post and Red Hat Product Documentation page.

Network Time Security (NTS)

NTS is a new authentication mechanism specified by the IETF for NTP. NTS has an NTS-KE protocol using Transport Layer Security (TLS) to establish the keys and provide the client with cookies which allow the NTP server to not keep any client-specific state. NTP packets are authenticated using Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD). NTS is expected to scale well to a large numbers of clients. There are already some public NTP servers with NTS support. Read more

Subsystems

Filesystem Capabilities

The need for setuid applications can be reduced via the application of filesystem capabilities using the xattrs available to most modern filesystems. This reduces the possible misuse of vulnerable setuid applications. The kernel provides the support and the user-space tools are available in the libcap package.

PR_SET_SECCOMP

Setting SECCOMP(SECure COMPuting) for a process is meant to confine it to a small subsystem of system calls, used for specialized processing-only programs. See this article and SECCOMP article for more information.

Platform Abstraction For Security (PARSEC)

PARSEC is the Platform AbstRaction for SECurity, an open-source initiative to provide a common API to hardware security and cryptographic services in a platform-agnostic way. This abstraction layer keeps workloads decoupled from physical platform details, enabling cloud-native delivery flows within the data center and at the edge. The PARSEC daemon can currently use a Trusted Platform Module 2 (TPM2) chip, Hardware Security Module (HSM) device, or systems that have an Arm TrustZone technology enabled.

Further reading: PARSEC GitHub

Fedora 33 release notes

Mandatory Access Control (MAC)

Mandatory Access Controls specifies which subject can access specific data. Mandatory Access Controls are handled via the kernel LSM(Linux Security Modules) hooks. MAC is based on the security labels. Data on the system has clearance and classification data stored with security labels, which can be accessed by specific subjects or objects.When some subject tries to access the data on the system then the rules defined by the policy are checked to take access control decision.Security Levels are classified like Unclassified -> Confidential -> Secret -> Top Secret.If user has clearance to access the requested object then user will be allowed otherwise user will be denied access. It is a system wide policy which states that who is allowed to access, an individual user cannot alter the access. MAC model is mostly used in environment where confidentiality is important like in Government organizations like military, an example of widely used of MAC is SELinux.Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) employs MAC rules to facilitate fine-grained security.

see MAC

SELinux

SELinux is an inode-based MAC. See this page and this page for more information.

SELinux targeted policy

SELinux enabled with targeted policy by default. See discussion of policies page and this page for more information.

SELinux Executable Memory Protection

SELinux restricts certain memory protection operation if the appropriate boolean values enable these checks. See this page for more information.

SELinux user confinement

Support for SELinux to confine users access on a system. Each Linux user is mapped to an SELinux user via SELinux policy, allowing Linux users to inherit the restrictions placed on SELinux users, for example (depending on the user), not being able to: run the X Window System; use networking; run setuid applications (unless SELinux policy permits it); or run the su and sudo commands

# semanage login -l

Login Name           SELinux User         MLS/MCS Range        Service

__default__          unconfined_u         s0-s0:c0.c1023       *
root                 unconfined_u         s0-s0:c0.c1023       *
system_u             system_u             s0-s0:c0.c1023       *

All the linux users are mapped to __default__ which maps to unconfined_u user. SELinux users that are available are guest_u, xguest_u, user_u, staff_u.

# ls /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/users
guest_u  root  staff_u  sysadm_u  unconfined_u  user_u  xguest_u

# ls /etc/selinux/mls/contexts/users
guest_u  root  staff_u  unconfined_u  user_u  xguest_u

* sysadm_u is not present in MLS Policy

Users are defined in /etc/selinux/<targeted or mls>/contexts/users. See Confined and Unconfined Users article for more information.

User	Domain	X Window System	su and sudo	Execute in home directory and /tmp/	Networking
guest_u	guest_t no	no	no	optional	no
xguest_u	xguest_t	yes	no	optional	only Firefox
user_u	user_t	yes	no	optional	yes
staff_u	staff_t	yes	only sudo	optional	yes

SELinux XACE

SELinux X Access Control Extension (XACE) aims at extending SELinux to X.org system, to provide flexible fine-grained MAC to the desktop. See this page and this page for more information.

SELinux sandbox

Support for SELinux to test untrusted content via a sandbox. See this page and this page for more information.

SELinux Deny Ptrace

A boolean variable to allow SELinux to turn off all processes ability to ptrace other process. See this page, this page and this page for more information.

SELinux restricted module loading

Support for SELinux to restrict the loading of kernel modules by unprivileged processes in confined domains was implemented in this commit.

User namespaces

User namespaces allow per-namespace mappings of user and group IDs. This means that a process' user and group IDs inside a user namespace can be different from its IDs outside of the namespace. Most notably, a process can have a nonzero user ID outside a namespace while at the same time having a user ID of zero inside the namespace; in other words, the process is unprivileged for operations outside the user namespace but has root privileges inside the namespace (see this page and this page).

See BZ#917708 to track this feature in Fedora. User namespaces were first included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 as a Technology Preview (release note, BZ#1138782). Full support for User namespaces was added in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 (release note).

/tmp namespace for systemd

Run some services started by systemd with a private /tmp directory. This would mitigate the chance of a service making a mistake with how it handles its /tmp data allowing a user on the system to get a privilege escalation, since users would not have access to the services /tmp directory.

See this page and this page for more information.

Polyinstantiate /tmp, /var/tmp and user home folders

To protect the world writable shared folders like /tmp and /var/tmp PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) can help by creating namespace for users on the system. Security of a system works at different layers, Polyinstantiating these world writable folders add an extra layer to protect from further intrusion into the system. Polyinstanting means that a new instance of /tmp or /var/tmp directory is created for each user. This feature is implemented using pam_namespace.so. To enable this feature :

uncomment the respective lines in /etc/security/namespace.conf

#/tmp     /tmp-inst/            level      root,adm
#/var/tmp /var/tmp/tmp-inst/    level      root,adm
# Remove the line below if required to polyinstantiate HOME directory of the user
#$HOME    $HOME/$USER.inst/     level

add

 session    required     pam_namespace.so 

to /etc/pam.d/login. File /etc/security/namespace.conf specifies which directories will be polyinstantiated. It also specifies how they will be polyinstantiated , what will the names of the directories which will be polyinstantiated and also for users where Polyinstantiation would not be performed.

create the directories and set selinux context and bool value to polyinstantiate

# mkdir /tmp-inst /var/tmp-inst
# chmod 000 /tmp-inst
# chmod 000 /var/tmp-inst
# chcon -R -t tmp_t /tmp-inst
# chcon -R -t tmp_t /var/tmp-inst
# setsebool polyinstantiation_enabled 1

• $ man 8 pam_namespace
• $ man 5 namespace.conf

As per reference https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-polyinstantiation/

Polyinstantiation of world-writeable directories prevents the following types of attacks:

• Race-condition attacks with symbolic links
• Exposing a file name considered secret information or useful to an attacker
• Attacks by one user on another user
• Attacks by a user on a daemon
• Attacks by a non-root daemon on a user

However, polyinstantiation does NOT prevent these types of attacks:

• Attacks by a root daemon on a user
• Attacks by root (account or escalated privilege) on any user

see Polyinstantiation of directories in an SE Linux system Improve security with polyinstantiation

Filesystem encryption

Encrypted LVM

Modern Fedora versions include the ability to install Fedora onto an encrypted LVM, which allows all partitions in the logical volume, including swap, to be encrypted. LVM uses LUKS encryption (Linux Unified Key Setup). Except the boot partition, all other partitions can be encrypted. As the Linux Kernel modules reside on root partition, they are also protected if encryption is applied. With the use of LVM Encryption users can just encrypt the physical volume where other partitions reside making encryption and decryption much faster. LVM is created under an encrypted blockdevice which hides the LVM until the blockdevice is decrypted. Once the blockdevice is decrypted, it reads the volume structure and mounts all the detected partitions at boot time.

See the following references for more information about LUKS support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux: solution article, RHEL-5, RHEL-6, RHEL-7, RHEL 8. Note that in RHEL-8 the default format for LUKS encryption is LUKS2. The legacy LUKS1 format remains fully supported and it is provided as a format compatible with earlier RHEL releases.

eCryptfs

eCryptfs (Enterprise cryptographic Filesystem) is a cryptographic stacked Linux filesystem. eCryptfs stores cryptographic metadata in the header of each file written, so that encrypted files can be copied between hosts; the file will be decrypted with the proper key in the Linux kernel keyring. It has been there since Kernel 2.6.19. It works at filesystem-level, so this type of encryption can be applied to specific folders/directories as needed after creation of Filesystem.

See eCryptfs homepage and eCryptfs Article for more details. eCryptfs is available in bot Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 as a technology preview. As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, eCryptfs is not included.

User Space Hardening

Many security features are available through the default compiler flags used to build packages and through the kernel in Fedora.

Non-Executable Memory (NX)

Modern processors support a feature called NX which allows a system to control the execution of various portions of memory. Data memory is flagged as non-executable and program memory is flagged as non-writeable. This helps prevent certain types of buffer overflow exploits from working as expected. Most modern CPUs protect against executing non-executable memory regions (heap, stack, etc). Since not all processors support the NX feature, attempts have been made to support this feature via segment limits. A segment limit will prevent certain portions of memory from being executed. This provides very similar functionality to NX technology. After booting, you can see what NX protection is in effect:

• Hardware-based (via PAE mode):
  • [ 0.000000] NX (Execute Disable) protection: active

• Partial Emulation (via segment limits):
  • [ 0.000000] Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection

For more information, see Security Features page.

Built as PIE

All programs built as Position Independent Executables (PIE) with "-fPIE -pie" can take advantage of the exec ASLR. This protects against "return-to-text" and generally frustrates memory corruption attacks. This requires centralized changes to the compiler options when building the entire archive. PIE has a large (5-10%) performance penalty on architectures with small numbers of general registers (e.g. x86), so it should only be used for a select number of security-critical packages. PIE on x86_64 does not have the same penalties, and will eventually be made the default, but more testing is required. See this paper and this FESCo ticket for more information.

In Fedora 23 and later, all packages are built with PIE and Full RELRO. See this page for details.

Pointer Obfuscation

Some pointers stored in glibc are obfuscated via PTR_MANGLE/PTR_UNMANGLE macros internally in glibc, preventing libc function pointers from being overwritten during runtime. This feature was introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, for further information see this blog post.

Heap Protector

The GNU C Library heap protector (both automatic via ptmalloc and manual) provides corrupted-list/unlink/double-free/overflow protections to the glibc heap memory manager (first introduced in glibc 2.3.4). This stops the ability to perform arbitrary code execution via heap memory overflows that try to corrupt the control structures of the malloc heap memory areas. This protection has evolved over time, adding more and more protections as additional corner-cases were researched. As it currently stands, glibc 2.10 and later appears to successfully resist even these hard-to-hit conditions. See this page for more details.

Built with Fortify Source

Programs built with "-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2" (and -O1 or higher), enable several compile-time and run-time protections in glibc:

• expand unbounded calls to "sprintf", "strcpy" into their "n" length-limited cousins when the size of a destination buffer is known (protects against memory overflows).
• stop format string "%n" attacks when the format string is in a writable memory segment.
• require checking various important function return codes and arguments (e.g. system, write, open).
• require explicit file mask when creating new files.

-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 also protects C++ code. See this page for more information.

Stack Protector

gcc's -fstack-protector provides a randomized stack canary that protects against stack overflows, and reduces the chances of arbitrary code execution via controlling return address destinations. Enabled at compile-time. The routines used for stack checking are actually part of glibc, but gcc is patched to enable linking against those routines by default. See this page for more information.

Strong Stack Protector

See "Strong" stack protection for GCC and Security improvements in RHEL-7 articles for more information.

Stack Clash Protection

Building binaries with -fstack-clash-protection introduces a mitigation which prevents stack clash attacks, in which an attacker clashes the stack with the heap, or vice versa, for exploitation. Red Hat’s engineers implemented -fstack-clash-protection for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) targets starting with RHEL 7.5. RHEL 7.5 enables -fstack-clash-protection for glibc only. Starting with RHEL 8, the entire distribution is compiled with -fstack-clash-protection and annobin/annocheck are used to verify that the distribution was compiled with the proper flags. Fedora 27 and later enable -fstack-clash-protection by default for all packages using the standard default compilation options.

GLIBCXX Assertions

The g++ compiler flag -D_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS turns on cheap range checks for C++ arrays, vectors, and strings, as well as null pointer dereference checks for smart pointers. This feature is implemented in libstdc++ and was introduced in Fedora 28. This hardening flag is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but only effective with DTS 6 or later.

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)

ASLR is implemented by the kernel and the ELF loader by randomizing the location of memory allocations (stack, heap, shared libraries, etc). This makes memory addresses harder to predict when an attacker is attempting a memory-corruption exploit. ASLR is controlled system-wide by the value of /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space.

• 0 - Turn ASLR off.
• 1 - Make the addresses of mmap(2) allocations, the stack, loaded shared libraries and the VDSO page randomized.
• 2 - Also support heap randomization in additon.

Even when randomize_va_space is set to 2, the text segment of binaries is loaded at a static address. To make ASLR effective all segments must be randomized. Leaving the text segment loading address non-randomized reduces the protection provided by the ASLR since the attackers can use ret2text attacks. The loading address of the text segement in a binary can be randomized by building the binary as PIE (Position Independent Executable).

See this article for more information.

Stack ASLR

Each execution of a program results in a different stack memory space layout. This makes it harder to locate in memory where to attack or deliver an executable attack payload. This feature has been available in the mainline kernel since 2.6.15.

Libs/mmap ASLR

Each execution of a program results in a different mmap memory space layout. This causes the dynamically loaded libraries to get loaded into different locations each time. This makes it harder to locate in memory where to jump to for "return to libc" to similar attacks. This was available in the mainline kernel since 2.6.15.

Exec ASLR

Each execution of a program that has been built with "-fPIE -pie" will get loaded into a different memory location. This makes it harder to locate in memory where to attack or jump to when performing memory-corruption-based attacks. This was available in the mainline kernel since 2.6.25.

brk ASLR

Similar to exec ASLR, brk ASLR adjusts the memory locations relative between the exec memory area and the brk memory area (for small mallocs). The randomization of brk offset from exec memory was added in 2.6.22.

VDSO ASLR

Each execution of a program results in a random vdso location. This has existed in the mainline kernel since 2.6.18 (x86, PPC) and 2.6.22 (x86_64). People needing ancient pre-libc6 static high vdso mappings can use "vdso=2" on the kernel boot command line to gain COMPAT_VDSO again. See this article for more information.

Built with RELRO

RELRO stands for RELocation Read-Only, it is a mitigation technique to harden data sections of an ELF/process. It is used to move commonly exploited structures in ELF binary to a read-only location. It Hardens ELF programs against loader memory area overwrites by having the loader mark any areas of the relocation table as read-only for any symbols resolved at load-time ("read-only relocations"). This reduces the area of possible GOT-overwrite-style memory corruption attacks, specially the GOT is made read-only after relocation by the dynamic linker.

RELRO can be classified into:

Partial RELRO

• Compilation: gcc -Wl,-z,relro
• ELF sections are reordered, so that ELF internal data sections (.got, .dtors, etc) precede the program's data sections (.data and .bss)
• non-PLT GOT is read-only
• GOT is writable

Full RELRO

• compilation: gcc -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now
• Supports all the features of partial RELRO
• In addition , GOT is also remapped as read-only

In case of a bss or data overflow bug both partial and full RELRO can protect the ELF internal data sections from being overwritten. With full RELRO a working mitigation technique to successfully prevent the modification of GOT entries is available. Full RELRO has been enabled for all packages in Fedora 23 and later.

In short, RELRO hardens ELF programs against loader memory area overwrites by having the loader mark any areas of the relocation table as read-only for any symbols resolved at load-time ("read-only relocations"). This reduces the area of possible GOT-overwrite-style memory corruption attacks. RELRO has been enabled for all packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and later versions.

This information has been borrowed from this article.

Built with BIND_NOW

Marks ELF programs to resolve all dynamic symbols at start-up (instead of on-demand, also known as "immediate binding") so that the GOT can be made entirely read-only (when combined with RELRO above). Note that BIND_NOW is enabled in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and later versions and not recommended for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

/proc/$pid/maps protection

With ASLR, a process's memory space layout suddenly becomes valuable to attackers. The "maps" file is made read-only except to the process itself or the owner of the process. Went into mainline kernel with sysctl toggle in 2.6.22. The toggle was made non-optional in 2.6.27, forcing the privacy to be enabled regardless of sysctl settings (this is a good thing).

Symlink restrictions

A long-standing class of security issues is the symlink-based ToCToU race, most commonly seen in world-writable directories like /tmp/. The common method of exploitation of this flaw is crossing privilege boundaries when following a given symlink (i.e. a root user follows a symlink belonging to another user).

In modern Fedora version, symlinks in world-writable sticky directories (e.g. /tmp) cannot be followed if the follower and directory owner do not match the symlink owner. The behavior is controllable through the /proc/sys/kernel/yama/protected_sticky_symlinks sysctl. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and later versions provide a feature to protect against hard and symbolic link attacks.

Hardlink restrictions

Hardlinks can be abused in a similar fashion to symlinks above, but they are not limited to world-writable directories. If /etc/ and /home/ are on the same partition, a regular user can create a hardlink to /etc/shadow in their home directory. While it retains the original owner and permissions, it is possible for privileged programs that are otherwise symlink-safe to mistakenly access the file through its hardlink. Additionally, a very minor untraceable quota-bypassing local denial of service is possible by an attacker exhausting disk space by filling a world-writable directory with hardlinks.

In modern Fedora versions, hardlinks cannot be created to files that the user would be unable to read and write originally, or are otherwise sensitive. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and later versions provide a feature to protect against hard and symbolic link attacks.

ptrace scope

A troubling weakness of the Linux process interfaces is that a single user is able to examine the memory and running state of any of their processes. For example, if one application was compromised, it would be possible for an attacker to attach to other running processes (e.g. SSH sessions, GPG agent, etc) to extract additional credentials and continue to immediately expand the scope of their attack without resorting to user-assisted phishing or trojans. It is provided by YAMA , can be enabled by CONFIG_SECURITY_YAMA in the kernel.

Independent of this configuration, processes that know they store secrets in memory may already use prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE,0); to prevent ptrace and other memory-snooping attacks. See this and this.

Overflow checking in new operator

GCC performs overflow checking in operator new[]. new operator is used to dynamically allocate memory.It throws bad_alloc exception, header to include for using it is <new> new() or new[]() without declaration of exception cannot signal memory exhaustion.If there is an option to choose between calloc/malloc/new for allocation of the memory, new should be used. If new[] is used to allocate memory then delete[] should be used to free the allocated memory. Using delete without [] will cause memory leak. Use try-catch block with new, as it throws exception and does not return value, though it can be forced to return a value by using nothrow.

 using namespace std;
 /* this should return a value */
 alpha* pt = new (nothrow) alpha[200];

 or it will throw bad_alloc exception which can be handled by the following code
 class bad_alloc : public exception {
 /* error to be thrown to be implemented here */
 };
 struct alpha_t{};

 extern const alpha_t alpha;  // indicator for allocation to prevent exceptions

 /* should throw exception */
 int* ptr = new int[100000];

 /* to avoid exception correct usage would be */
 int* ptr = new(alpha) int[100000];

See Array allocation in C++ article for more information.

Built with Format Security

Enable "-Werror=format-security" compilation flag for all packages in Fedora. Once this flag is enabled, GCC will refuse to compile code that could be vulnerable to a string format security flaw. see Format Security for more information. This flag is supported in all versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Crypto Policy

Unify the crypto policies used by different applications and libraries. That is allow setting a consistent security level for crypto on all applications in a Fedora system. The implementation approach will be to initially modify SSL libraries to respect the policy and gradually adding more libraries and applications. As of Fedora 31, users can customize existing system-wide crypto policies by removing or adding enabled algorithms and protocols.

Fedora 33 disables:

• TLS Protocols versions older than 1.2 version, so TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 are now disabled by default.

• SHA hash signatures in TLS, SSH and IKE protocols.

• Diffie Hellman key exchange with parameter size less that 2048 bits.

See Crypto Policy and Custom Crypto Policies for more information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 provides a consistent crypto policy which is applied consistently to running services and is kept up-to-date as part of the software updates, to stay in par with cryptographic advances. It configures the core cryptographic subsystems, covering TLS, IPSec, DNSSec and Kerberos protocols and provides a small set of policies which the administrator can select, with the default being a conservative policy offering secure settings for today’s threat models. The policy has been extended in RHEL 8.2 to enable users to specify their own crypto policies if the built-in policies do not meet their requirements. Refer to the Security Hardening Guide for a more detailed description.

Tamper Resistant Logs

When a system is compromised, attackers might tamper the system logs. This can be prevented by using FSS (Forward Secure Sealing) which is implemented in the systemd journal. Binary logs maintained by systemd are sealed at certain time intervals. Sealing is an cryptographic operation on the logs so that any tempering on the logs can be detected, though an attacker can completely remove entire logs but this is likely to get noticed by the system administrator.

See Forward Secure Sealing (FSS) and LWN articles for more information.

Aarch64 Pointer Authentication

Arm Pointer Authentication (PAC) is a method of hardening code from Return Oriented Programming (ROP) attacks. It uses a tag in a pointer to sign and verify pointers. Branch Target Identification (BTI) is another code hardening method, where the branch/jump target is identified with a special landing pad instruction. Outside of some system support in glibc+kernel, packages gain the additional hardening by compiling with the -mbranch-protection= flag available in recent versions of GCC. In particular -mbranch-protection=standard enables both BTI and PAC, with backwards compatible to armv8.0 code sequences that activate on v8.3 (PAC) & v8.5 (BTI) enabled Arm machines. Read more

Kernel Hardening

The kernel itself has protections enabled to make it more difficult to become compromised.

0-address protection

Since the kernel and userspace share virtual memory addresses, the "NULL" memory space needs to be protected so that userspace mmap'd memory cannot start at address 0, stopping "NULL dereference" kernel attacks. This is possible with 2.6.22 kernels, and was implemented with the "mmap_min_addr" sysctl setting. See this article for more information.

Block module loading

It is possible to remove CAP_SYS_MODULES from the system-wide capability bounding set, which would stop any new kernel modules from being loaded. This was another layer of protection to stop kernel rootkits from being installed. This feature to block module loading can be enabled setting 1 in /proc/sys/kernel/modules_disabled.

/dev/mem protection

Some applications (Xorg) need direct access to the physical memory from user-space. The special file /dev/mem exists to provide this access. In the past, it was possible to view and change kernel memory from this file if an attacker had root access. See this page and this page for details. Note that this option is called STRICT_DEVMEM in current kernels.

/dev/kmem disabled

There is no modern user of /dev/kmem any more beyond attackers using it to load kernel rootkits. CONFIG_DEVKMEM is set to n.

Module RO/NX

This feature extends CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA to include similar restrictions for loaded modules in the kernel. This can help resist future kernel exploits that depend on various memory regions in loaded modules. Enabled via the CONFIG_DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX option. Note that the name of this option was changed to CONFIG_HARDENED_MODULE_MAPPINGS first, then renamed to CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX.

Kernel Address Display Restriction

When attackers try to develop run anywhere exploits for kernel vulnerabilities, they frequently need to know the location of internal kernel structures. By treating kernel addresses as sensitive information, those locations are not visible to regular local users. /proc/sys/kernel/kptr_restrict is set to 1 to block the reporting of known kernel address leaks. Additionally, various files and directories were made readable only by the root user: /boot/vmlinuz, /boot/System.map, /sys/kernel/debug/, /proc/slabinfo.

This feature was introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. See RHEL-6 release notes and kernel sysctl documentation.

Blacklist Rare Protocols

Normally the kernel allows all network protocols to be autoloaded on demand. Many of these protocols are old, rare, or generally of little use to the average Fedora user and may contain undiscovered exploitable vulnerabilities. These include: ax25, netrom, x25, rose, decnet, econet, rds, and af_802154. If any of the protocols are needed, they can speficially loaded via modprobe, or the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rare-network.conf file can be updated to remove the blacklist entry. A FESCo proposal to do this for Fedora is in progress.

Write-protect kernel .rodata sections

Enabled write-protection for kernel read-only data structures by default. See this commit for details. This makes sure that certain kernel data sections are marked to block modification. This helps protect against some classes of kernel rootkits. Enabled via the CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA option. Note that the name of this option was renamed to CONFIG_STRICT_KERNEL_RWX.

Kernel Stack Protector

Similar to the stack protector used for ELF programs in userspace, the kernel can protect its internal stacks as well. This feature is enabled via the CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR option.

See commits 1, 2 and 3 for more details.

sVirt labelling

Support for sVirt labelling to provide security over guest instances. See this page for more information.

SYN cookies

When a system is overwhelmed by new network connections, SYN cookie use is activated, which helps mitigate a SYN-flood attack. This feature can be controlled by /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies file.

Syscall Filtering

Programs can filter out the availability of kernel syscalls by using the seccomp_filter interface. This is done in containers or sandboxes that want to further limit the exposure to kernel interfaces when potentially running untrusted software.

Secure Boot Support

"Secure Boot" describes a UEFI feature by which malware is prevented from inserting itself into the boot process before the operating system loads.

The Secure Boot technology is not supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Systems using UEFI Specification 2.2 or later must have Secure Boot disabled in order to install and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 offers UEFI Secure Boot support by including a kernel and associated drivers that are signed by a UEFI CA certificate. See also UEFI Secure Boot Documentation in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

For more in-depth information about Secure Boot see UEFI Secure Boot in Modern Computer Security Solutions, this, this and this.

Additional Documentation

• Coordination with Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features
• Coordination with Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/Hardening
• Gentoo's Hardening project: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/hardened-toolchain.xml

Legacy Matrix

By Default

Available

Unimplemented

Security Features	RHEL 3	RHEL 4	RHEL 5	RHEL 6	RHEL 7	Fedora 24	Fedora 27	Rawhide
Configuration
Configurable Firewall	iptables	iptables	iptables	iptables	iptables	firewalld	firewalld	firewalld
Signed updates	yum	yum	yum	yum	yum	yum / dnf	yum / dnf	yum / dnf
Password hashing	md5crypt	md5crypt	md5crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt	sha512crypt
Subsystems
Filesystem Capabilities	--	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
PR_SET_SECCOMP	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y	Y
Mandatory Access Control
SELinux	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux targeted policy	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux Executable Memory Protection	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux user confinement	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux XACE	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux sandbox	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux Deny Ptrace	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
SELinux restricted module loading	N	N	?	?	Y	Y	Y	Y
User namespaces	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
/tmp namespace for systemd	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Polyinstantiate /tmp, /var/tmp and user home folders	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Filesystem Encryption
Encrypted LVM	?	?	Y	Standard Installer	Standard Installer	Standard Installer	Standard Installer	Standard Installer
eCryptfs	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Optional Package	Optional Package	Optional Package
User Space Hardening
Non-Executable Memory (NX)	Y (since 9/2004)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Built as PIE	package list (since 9/2004)	package list	package list	package list	package list	Y	Y	Y
Pointer Obfuscation	N	N	Y	Y	Y	glibc	glibc	glibc
Heap Protector	N	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc	glibc
Built with Fortify Source	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Stack Protector	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Strong Stack Protector	--	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y
Built with Format Security	--	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y
Stack ASLR	Y (since 9/2004)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Libs/mmap ASLR	Y (since 9/2004)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Exec ASLR	(since 9/2004)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
brk ASLR	N	N	?	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
VDSO ASLR	no vDSO	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Built with RELRO	--	--	--	--	gcc patch	Y	Y	Y
Built with BIND_NOW	N	?	package list	package list	package list	Y	Y	Y
/proc/$pid/maps protection	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y	Y
Symlink restrictions	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Hardlink restrictions	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
ptrace scope	N	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y
Overflow checking in new operator	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Crypto Policy	--	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y
Tamper Resistant Logs	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kernel Hardening
0-address protection	Y (since 11/2009)	Y (since 9/2009)	Y (since 5/2008)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Block module loading	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/dev/mem protection	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
/dev/kmem disabled	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Module RO/NX	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kernel Address Display Restriction	--	--	--	--	Y	Y	Y	Y
Blacklist Rare Protocols	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Write-protect kernel .rodata sections	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kernel Stack Protector	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
sVirt labelling	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
SYN cookies	?	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Syscall Filtering	N	N	N	?	Y	Y	Y	Y
Secure Boot Support	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y