V-248630

Discussion

It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. A core dump includes a memory image taken at the time the operating system terminates an application. The memory image could contain sensitive data and is generally useful only for developers trying to debug problems. When the kernel invokes "systemd-coredump" to handle a core dump, it runs in privileged mode and will connect to the socket created by the "systemd-coredump.socket" unit. This, in turn, will spawn an nonprivileged "systemd-coredump@.service" instance to process the core dump.

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Note: If kernel dumps are disabled in accordance with OL08-00-010671, this requirement is not applicable.

Verify OL 8 is not configured to acquire, save, or process core dumps with the following command: 
 
$ sudo systemctl status systemd-coredump.socket 
 
systemd-coredump.socket 
Loaded: masked (Reason: Unit systemd-coredump.socket is masked.) 
Active: inactive (dead) 
 
If the "systemd-coredump.socket" is loaded and not masked and the need for core dumps is not documented with the information system security officer (ISSO) as an operational requirement, this is a finding.