Guide to the Secure Configuration of Debian 8

This guide presents a catalog of security-relevant configuration settings for Debian 8. It is a rendering of content structured in the eXtensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) in order to support security automation. The SCAP content is is available in the config_item="scap-security-guide" package which is developed at https://www.open-scap.org/security-policies/scap-security-guide.

Providing system administrators with such guidance informs them how to securely configure systems under their control in a variety of network roles. Policy makers and baseline creators can use this catalog of settings, with its associated references to higher-level security control catalogs, in order to assist them in security baseline creation. This guide is a italics="catalog, not a checklist," and satisfaction of every item is not likely to be possible or sensible in many operational scenarios. However, the XCCDF format enables granular selection and adjustment of settings, and their association with OVAL and OCIL content provides an automated checking capability. Transformations of this document, and its associated automated checking content, are capable of providing baselines that meet a diverse set of policy objectives. Some example XCCDF italics="Profiles", which are selections of items that form checklists and can be used as baselines, are available with this guide. They can be processed, in an automated fashion, with tools that support the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). The DISA STIG for Debian 8, which provides required settings for US Department of Defense systems, is one example of a baseline created from this guidance.
Do not attempt to implement any of the settings in this guide without first testing them in a non-operational environment. The creators of this guidance assume no responsibility whatsoever for its use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any other characteristic.
Profile ID(default)

Revision History

Current version: 0.1.39

  • draft (as of 2018-05-04)

Platforms

  • cpe:/o:debianproject:debian:8

Table of Contents

  1. Remediation functions used by the SCAP Security Guide Project
  2. Services
    1. Deprecated services
    2. Generic required services
    3. SSH Server
    4. APT service configuration
  3. System Settings
    1. Configure Syslog
    2. Access Control using sudo
    3. Hardening the filesystem
    4. Account and Access Control
    5. File Permissions and Masks
    6. Hardening the hardware usage
    7. Installing and Maintaining Software

Checklist

Remediation functions used by the SCAP Security Guide Project   [ref]group

XCCDF form of the various remediation functions as used by remediation scripts from the SCAP Security Guide Project.

Services   [ref]group

The best protection against vulnerable software is running less software. This section describes how to review the software which Debian 8 installs on a system and disable software which is not needed. It then enumerates the software packages installed on a default Debian 8 system and provides guidance about which ones can be safely disabled.

Debian 8 provides a convenient minimal install option that essentially installs the bare necessities for a functional system. When building Debian 8 systems, it is highly recommended to select the minimal packages and then build up the system from there.

Deprecated services   [ref]group

Some deprecated software services impact the overall system security due to their behavior (leak of confidentiality in network exchange, usage as uncontrolled communication channel, risk associated with the service due to its old age, etc.

Generic required services   [ref]group

Some services need to be deployed in order to ensure basic verifications and reporting on GNU/Linux operating systems. Each of these service take part in the administrability of the system.

SSH Server   [ref]group

The SSH protocol is recommended for remote access (remote login and secure remote file transfer). SSH provides both confidentiality and integrity for exchanged data but needs to be configured properly in term of:
Cryptography usage, according to the current CVEs associated to the various cryptographic modes
Authentication and autorization, depending on your needs but requiring some specific initial generic security
consideration in the OpenSSH configuration writing More detailed information is available from the OpenSSH project's website http://www.openssh.org. The Debian package for server side implementation is called openssh-server.

Configure OpenSSH Server if deployed   [ref]group

If the system needs to act as an SSH server, then certain changes should be made to the OpenSSH daemon configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config. The following recommendations can be applied to this file. See the sshd_config(5) man page for more detailed information.

APT service configuration   [ref]group

The apt service manage the package management and update of the whole system. Its configuration need to be properly defined to ensure efficient security updates, packages and repository authentication and proper lifecycle management.

System Settings   [ref]group

Contains rules that check correct system settings.

Configure Syslog   [ref]group

The syslog service has been the default Unix logging mechanism for many years. It has a number of downsides, including inconsistent log format, lack of authentication for received messages, and lack of authentication, encryption, or reliable transport for messages sent over a network. However, due to its long history, syslog is a de facto standard which is supported by almost all Unix applications.

In Debian Jessie, rsyslog has replaced syslog as the syslog daemon of choice, and it includes some additional security features such as reliable, connection-oriented (i.e. TCP) transmission of logs, the option to log to database formats, and the encryption of log data en route to a central logging server. This section discusses how to configure rsyslog for best effect, and how to use tools provided with the system to maintain and monitor logs. Yet, it is also possible to install syslog-ng to manage local and server-side logging services. Both are tested here, to let the administrator choose.

Rsyslog Logs Sent To Remote Host   [ref]group

If system logs are to be useful in detecting malicious activities, it is necessary to send logs to a remote server. An intruder who has compromised the root account on a machine may delete the log entries which indicate that the system was attacked before they are seen by an administrator.

However, it is recommended that logs be stored on the local host in addition to being sent to the loghost, especially if rsyslog has been configured to use the UDP protocol to send messages over a network. UDP does not guarantee reliable delivery, and moderately busy sites will lose log messages occasionally, especially in periods of high traffic which may be the result of an attack. In addition, remote rsyslog messages are not authenticated in any way by default, so it is easy for an attacker to introduce spurious messages to the central log server. Also, some problems cause loss of network connectivity, which will prevent the sending of messages to the central server. For all of these reasons, it is better to store log messages both centrally and on each host, so that they can be correlated if necessary.

Ensure Proper Configuration of Log Files   [ref]group

The file /etc/rsyslog.conf controls where log message are written. These are controlled by lines called rules, which consist of a selector and an action. These rules are often customized depending on the role of the system, the requirements of the environment, and whatever may enable the administrator to most effectively make use of log data. The default rules in Debian 8 are:

auth,authpriv.*			/var/log/auth.log
*.*;auth,authpriv.none          -/var/log/syslog
daemon.*                        -/var/log/daemon.log
kern.*                          -/var/log/kern.log
lpr.*                           -/var/log/lpr.log
mail.*                          -/var/log/mail.log
user.*                          -/var/log/user.log
mail.info                       -/var/log/mail.info
mail.warn                       -/var/log/mail.warn
mail.err                        /var/log/mail.err
news.crit                       /var/log/news/news.crit
news.err                        /var/log/news/news.err
news.notice                     -/var/log/news/news.notice
See the man page rsyslog.conf(5) for more information. Note that the rsyslog daemon is configured to use traditional timestamping to be understood by any log processing program. For high precision timestamping, comment the following line in /etc/rsyslog.conf:
$ ActionFileDefaultTemplate RSYSLOG_TraditionalFileFormat

Configure <tt>rsyslogd</tt> to Accept Remote Messages If Acting as a Log Server   [ref]group

By default, rsyslog does not listen over the network for log messages. If needed, modules can be enabled to allow the rsyslog daemon to receive messages from other systems and for the system thus to act as a log server. If the machine is not a log server, then lines concerning these modules should remain commented out.

Ensure All Logs are Rotated by <tt>logrotate</tt>   [ref]group

Edit the file /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog. Find the first line, which should look like this (wrapped for clarity):

/var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/maillog /var/log/spooler \
  /var/log/boot.log /var/log/cron {
Edit this line so that it contains a one-space-separated listing of each log file referenced in /etc/rsyslog.conf.

All logs in use on a system must be rotated regularly, or the log files will consume disk space over time, eventually interfering with system operation. The file /etc/logrotate.d/syslog is the configuration file used by the logrotate program to maintain all log files written by syslog. By default, it rotates logs weekly and stores four archival copies of each log. These settings can be modified by editing /etc/logrotate.conf, but the defaults are sufficient for purposes of this guide.

Note that logrotate is run nightly by the cron job /etc/cron.daily/logrotate. If particularly active logs need to be rotated more often than once a day, some other mechanism must be used.

Access Control using sudo   [ref]group

Sudo, which stands for "su 'do'", provides the ability to delegate authority to certain users, groups of users, or system administrators. When configured for system users and/or groups, Sudo can allow a user or group to execute privileged commands that normally only root is allowed to execute.

For more information on Sudo and addition Sudo configuration options, see https://www.sudo.ws

Hardening the filesystem   [ref]group

Hardening the filesystem and its usage is an efficient way to ensure an efficient separation of services, data and configurations while ensuring a more precise management of filesystem level access rights, enabling deactivation of some specific rights at the filesystem level. Moreover, the Linux Virtual file system support various hardening mechanisms that can be set using sysctl.

Partitioning   [ref]group

Separating various locations of the file systems in different partitions allows a more restrictive segregation, distinctly from one location to another. Moreover, some native restrictions can be made by partitioning, such as no hard link between different filesystems, and reduce the corruption impact to the affected filesystem instead of the entire system. The last gain is to allow a differenciated usage of storage media, depending on the operational needs (speed, resilience, etc.).

filesystem rights management   [ref]group

Adding filesystem specific hardening seriously limits various exploitation vectors based on filesystem invalid usage, such as invalid file types in invalid places (devices or setuid root files in external media, executable file in insecure filesystems, etc.). Some of these hardening require an efficient system partitioning.

Account and Access Control   [ref]group

In traditional Unix security, if an attacker gains shell access to a certain login account, they can perform any action or access any file to which that account has access. Therefore, making it more difficult for unauthorized people to gain shell access to accounts, particularly to privileged accounts, is a necessary part of securing a system. This section introduces mechanisms for restricting access to accounts under Debian 8.

Protect Accounts by Restricting Password-Based Login   [ref]group

Conventionally, Unix shell accounts are accessed by providing a username and password to a login program, which tests these values for correctness using the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files. Password-based login is vulnerable to guessing of weak passwords, and to sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks against passwords entered over a network or at an insecure console. Therefore, mechanisms for accessing accounts by entering usernames and passwords should be restricted to those which are operationally necessary.

File Permissions and Masks   [ref]group

Traditional Unix security relies heavily on file and directory permissions to prevent unauthorized users from reading or modifying files to which they should not have access.

Several of the commands in this section search filesystems for files or directories with certain characteristics, and are intended to be run on every local partition on a given system. When the variable PART appears in one of the commands below, it means that the command is intended to be run repeatedly, with the name of each local partition substituted for PART in turn.

The following command prints a list of all xfs partitions on the local system, which is the default filesystem for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 installations:

$ mount -t xfs | awk '{print $3}'
For any systems that use a different local filesystem type, modify this command as appropriate.

Verify Permissions on Important Files and Directories   [ref]group

Permissions for many files on a system must be set restrictively to ensure sensitive information is properly protected. This section discusses important permission restrictions which can be verified to ensure that no harmful discrepancies have arisen.

Verify permissions on files containing sensitive informations about the system   [ref]group

Various files contains sensitive informations that can leads to specific weaknesses or give structural informations for local exploits.

Restrict Programs from Dangerous Execution Patterns   [ref]group

The recommendations in this section are designed to ensure that the system's features to protect against potentially dangerous program execution are activated. These protections are applied at the system initialization or kernel level, and defend against certain types of badly-configured or compromised programs.

Disable Core Dumps   [ref]group

A core dump file is the memory image of an executable program when it was terminated by the operating system due to errant behavior. In most cases, only software developers legitimately need to access these files. The core dump files may also contain sensitive information, or unnecessarily occupy large amounts of disk space.

Once a hard limit is set in /etc/security/limits.conf, a user cannot increase that limit within his or her own session. If access to core dumps is required, consider restricting them to only certain users or groups. See the limits.conf man page for more information.

The core dumps of setuid programs are further protected. The sysctl variable fs.suid_dumpable controls whether the kernel allows core dumps from these programs at all. The default value of 0 is recommended.

Enable ExecShield   [ref]group

ExecShield describes kernel features that provide protection against exploitation of memory corruption errors such as buffer overflows. These features include random placement of the stack and other memory regions, prevention of execution in memory that should only hold data, and special handling of text buffers. These protections are enabled by default on 32-bit systems and controlled through sysctl variables kernel.exec-shield and kernel.randomize_va_space. On the latest 64-bit systems, kernel.exec-shield cannot be enabled or disabled with sysctl.

Hardening the hardware usage   [ref]group

Hardware dependent, but efficient against various risks.

Installing and Maintaining Software   [ref]group

The following sections contain information on security-relevant choices during the initial operating system installation process and the setup of software updates.

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