STIGUI
V-258079CAT II — Medium severitySV-258079r1045159_rule

RHEL 9 must enable the SELinux targeted policy.

Rule version RHEL-09-431015 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

Setting the SELinux policy to "targeted" or a more specialized policy ensures the system will confine processes that are likely to be targeted for exploitation, such as network or system services.

Note: During the development or debugging of SELinux modules, it is common to temporarily place nonproduction systems in "permissive" mode. In such temporary cases, SELinux policies should be developed, and once work is completed, the system should be reconfigured to "targeted".

Check

Verify the SELINUX on RHEL 9 is using the targeted policy with the following command:

$ sestatus | grep "policy name" 

Loaded policy name: targeted

If the loaded policy name is not "targeted", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 9 to use the targetd SELINUX policy.

Edit the file "/etc/selinux/config" and add or modify the following line:

SELINUXTYPE=targeted

A reboot is required for the changes to take effect.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-258079
Group title
SRG-OS-000445-GPOS-00199
Rule ID
SV-258079r1045159_rule
Check ID
C-61820r1045158_chk
Fix ID
F-61744r926223_fix