STIGUI
V-234988CAT I — High severitySV-234988r991589_rule

The SUSE operating system must disable the x86 Ctrl-Alt-Delete key sequence.

Rule version SLES-15-040060 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-20

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 availability of systems due to unintentional reboot. In the graphical user interface 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 the SUSE operating system is not configured to reboot the system when Ctrl-Alt-Delete is pressed.

Check that the ctrl-alt-del.target is masked with the following command:

> systemctl status ctrl-alt-del.target ctrl-alt-del.target Loaded: masked (/dev/null; maksed) Active: inactive (dead)

If the ctrl-alt-del.target is not 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

And reload the daemon to take effect

> sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Identifiers

Group ID
V-234988
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-234988r991589_rule
Check ID
C-38176r619233_chk
Fix ID
F-38139r619234_fix