STIGUI
V-282509CAT II — Medium severitySV-282509r1200507_rule

TOSS 5 must restrict usage of ptrace to descendant processes.

Rule version TOSS-05-000110 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Unrestricted usage of ptrace allows compromised binaries to run ptrace on other processes of the user. This way, the attacker can steal sensitive information from the target processes (e.g., SSH sessions, web browser, etc.) without any additional assistance from the user (i.e., without resorting to phishing).

Check

Verify TOSS 5 restricts usage of ptrace to descendant processes using the following command:

$ sudo sysctl kernel.yama.ptrace_scope

kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 1

If the returned line does not have a value of "1", or a line is not returned, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure TOSS 5 to restrict using ptrace to descendant processes by adding the following line to a file, in the "/etc/sysctl.d" directory:

kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 1

The system configuration files must be reloaded for the changes to take effect. To reload the contents of the files, run the following command:

$ sudo sysctl --system

Identifiers

Group ID
V-282509
Group title
SRG-OS-000132-GPOS-00067
Rule ID
SV-282509r1200507_rule
Check ID
C-87070r1200505_chk
Fix ID
F-86975r1200506_fix