Rule version RHEL-09-412080 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17
Terminating an idle session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended.
Note: For cloud-hosted systems where "ClientAliveInterval" (V-257996) is configured, this setting is not applicable.
Verify RHEL 9 logs out sessions that are idle for 10 minutes with the following command:
$ systemd-analyze cat-config systemd/logind.conf | grep StopIdleSessionSec #StopIdleSessionSec=infinity StopIdleSessionSec=600
If "StopIdleSessionSec" is not configured to "600" seconds, this is a finding.
Configure RHEL 9 to log out idle sessions.
Create the directory if necessary:
$ mkdir -p /etc/systemd/logind.conf.d/
Create a *.conf file in /etc/systemd/logind.conf.d/ with the following content:
[Login] StopIdleSessionSec=600 KillUserProcesses=no
Restart systemd-logind:
$ systemctl restart systemd-logind