STIGUI
V-248869CAT I — High severitySV-248869r991589_rule

The x86 Ctrl-Alt-Delete key sequence must be disabled on OL 8.

Rule version OL08-00-040170 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-24

Discussion

A locally logged-on user, who presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete when at the console, can reboot the system. If accidentally pressed, as could happen in the case of a mixed OS environment, this can create the risk of short-term loss of system availability due to unintentional reboot. In a graphical user environment, risk of unintentional reboot from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence is reduced because the user will be prompted before any action is taken.

Check

Verify OL 8 is not configured to reboot the system when Ctrl-Alt-Delete is pressed with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl status ctrl-alt-del.target | grep Loaded: 

Loaded: masked (Reason: Unit ctrl-alt-del.target is masked.)

If the "ctrl-alt-del.target" Loaded: value is not set to "masked", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the system to disable the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence for the command line with the following commands:

$ sudo systemctl disable ctrl-alt-del.target 
$ sudo systemctl mask ctrl-alt-del.target 

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/ctrl-alt-del.target -> /dev/null

Reload the daemon to take effect:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Identifiers

Group ID
V-248869
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-248869r991589_rule
Check ID
C-52303r780171_chk
Fix ID
F-52257r833245_fix