HRDN-7220 - Limit access to compilers

This information is provided as part of the Lynis community project. It is related to Lynis control HRDN-7220 and should be considered as-is and without guarantees. Any advice and commands should be tested before implementing them in production environments.

Control details
CategoryHardening
Application

Description

Compilers are usually not needed on production systems, unless the upgrade mechanism of the particular system uses the source code of a package and compiles it into an executable form. Leaving compilers accessible to all users increases the risk of abuse or give attackers additional leverage when finding other flaws. One example is privilege escalation, by compiling and execution a discovered weakness in an existing system component.

How to solve

Limit access to compilers and remove them if no longer needed.

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About

Lynis is a technical security auditing tool for Unix flavors like Linux, macOS, AIX, Solaris, and *BSD. It is open source software and free to use. Typical usage include system hardening, compliance testing, and vulnerability scanning. The project has an active community, including development via GitHub.

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