security-misc

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Miscellaneous Linux security hardening settings for Kicksecure and derivatives

Last updated Jun 22, 2026

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README

Enhances miscellaneous security settings

Note that all the security features seen in this repository may not yet be incorporated into a public Kicksecure/Whonix release. Refer to the forums with accompanying dates to see what is actually included in the most recent release.

Kernel hardening

This section is inspired by the Kernel Self Protection Project (KSPP). It attempts to implement all recommended Linux kernel settings by the KSPP and many more sources.

https://kspp.github.io/Recommended_Settings
https://github.com/KSPP/kspp.github.io

sysctl

sysctl settings are configured via the /usr/lib/sysctl.d/990-security-misc.conf configuration file and significant hardening is applied to a myriad of components.

Kernel space

Restrict access to kernel addresses through the use of kernel pointers regardless

of user privileges.

Restrict access to the kernel logs to CAP_SYSLOG as they often contain

sensitive information.

Prevent kernel information leaks in the console during boot.

Restrict usage of bpf() to CAP_BPF to prevent the loading of BPF programs

by unprivileged users.

Restrict loading TTY line disciplines to CAPSYSMODULE.

Restrict the userfaultfd() syscall to CAPSYSPTRACE, which reduces the

likelihood of use-after-free exploits.

Disable kexec as it can be used to replace the running kernel.

Entirely disable the SysRq key so that the Secure Attention Key (SAK)

can no longer be utilized. See documentation.

Optional - Disable all use of user namespaces.

Optional - Restrict user namespaces to CAPSYSADMIN as they can lead to substantial

privilege escalation.

Restrict kernel profiling and the performance events system to CAP_PERFMON.

Force immediate system reboot on the occurrence of a single kernel panic, reducing the

risk and impact of denial-of-service attacks and both cold and warm boot attacks.

Force the kernel to immediately panic on both "oopses" (which can potentially indicate

and thwart certain kernel exploitation attempts) and kernel warnings in the WARN() path.

Optional - Force immediate kernel panic on OOM (out of memory) which with the above setting

will force an immediate system reboot as opposed to placing any reliance on the oom_killer to avoid arbitrarily terminating security features based on their OOM score. Note this creates the risk of userspace-based denial-of-service attacks that maliciously fill memory.

Optional - Force immediate kernel panics upon receiving NMIs (Non-Maskable Interrupts)

triggered by serious hardware-level I/O issues, uncorrectable memory and hardware errors, and undefined or unknown sources in order to prevent data corruption.

Disable the use of legacy TIOCSTI operations which can be used to inject keypresses.

Disable asynchronous I/O as io_uring has been the source of numerous kernel exploits.

Disable 32-bit vDSO mappings as they are a legacy compatibility feature.

User space

Disable the usage of ptrace() by all processes as it enables programs to inspect

and modify other active processes.

Maximize the bits of entropy used for mmap ASLR across all CPU architectures.

Prevent hardlink and symlink TOCTOU races in world-writable directories.

Disallow unintentional writes to files in world-writable directories unless

they are owned by the directory owner to mitigate some data spoofing attacks.

Randomize the addresses (ASLR) for mmap base, stack, VDSO pages, and heap.

Raise the minimum address a process can request for memory mapping to 64KB to

protect against kernel null pointer dereference vulnerabilities.

Increase the maximum number of memory map areas a process is able to utilize to 1,048,576.

Optional - Disallow registering interpreters for various (miscellaneous) binary formats based

on a magic number or their file extension to prevent unintended code execution. See issue: https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/267

Core dumps

Disable core dump files and prevent their creation. If core dump files are

enabled, they will be named based on core.PID instead of the default core.

Swap space

Limit the copying of potentially sensitive content in memory to the swap device.

Networking

Enable hardening of the BPF JIT compiler to protect against JIT spraying.

Enable TCP SYN cookie protection to assist against SYN flood attacks.

Protect against TCP time-wait assassination hazards.

Enable reverse path filtering (source validation) of packets received

from all interfaces to prevent IP spoofing.

Disable ICMP redirect acceptance and redirect sending messages to prevent

man-in-the-middle attacks and minimize information disclosure.

Deny sending and receiving shared media redirects to reduce the risk of IP

spoofing attacks.

Enable ARP filtering to mitigate some ARP spoofing and ARP cache poisoning attacks.

Respond to ARP requests only if the target IP address is on-link,

preventing some IP spoofing attacks.

Drop gratuitous ARP packets to prevent ARP cache poisoning via

man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service attacks.

Ignore ICMP echo requests to prevent clock fingerprinting and Smurf attacks.

Ignore bogus ICMP error responses.

Disable source routing which allows users to redirect network traffic that

can result in man-in-the-middle attacks.

Do not accept IPv6 router advertisements (RAs) and solicitations which can result

in both man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service attacks.

Optional - Disable SACK and DSACK as they have historically been a known

vector for exploitation.

Disable TCP timestamps as they can allow detecting the system time.

Disable reuse of TIME_WAIT sockets for new outgoing connections as the above

setting disables TCP timestamps.

Log packets with impossible source or destination addresses to enable further

inspection and analysis.

Optional - Enable IPv6 Privacy Extensions.

Documentation: https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Networking

CD-ROM/DVD

Disable CD-ROM/DVD drive automatic tray closure and ejection functionality to

prevent scripted tray cycling attacks.

Disable all CD-ROM/DVD drive debug messages to limit information disclosure.

Optional - Restrict CD-ROM/DVD drives by disabling kernel checking and hardware access.

Boot parameters

Mitigations for known CPU vulnerabilities are enabled in their strictest form and simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is disabled. See the /etc/default/grub.d/40cpumitigations.cfg configuration file.

Importantly, we do not rely on the use of the already enabled-by-default mitigations=auto kernel boot parameter to perform CPU mitigations like many other distributions. This is because its use is both totally redundant and it does not apply all hardening settings to their strictest possible levels. See issue: https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/199#issuecomment-3327391859.

Note, to achieve complete protection for known CPU vulnerabilities, the latest security microcode (BIOS/UEFI) updates must be installed on the system. Furthermore, if using Secure Boot, the Secure Boot Forbidden Signature Database (DBX) must be kept up to date through UEFI Revocation List updates.

CPU mitigations:

Disable Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)

Spectre Side Channels (BTI and BHI)

Enable Kernel Page Table Isolation (PTI)

Meltdown

Speculative Store Bypass (SSB)

L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF)

Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS)

TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA)

iTLB Multihit

Special Register Buffer Data Sampling (SRBDS)

L1D Flushing

Processor MMIO Stale Data

Arbitrary Speculative Code Execution with Return Instructions (Retbleed)

Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions

Optional - Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO)

Gather Data Sampling (GDS)

Indirect Target Selection (ITS)

VMScape

Boot parameters relating to kernel hardening, DMA mitigations, and entropy generation are outlined in the /etc/default/grub.d/40kernelhardening.cfg configuration file.

Kernel space:

Disable merging of slabs with similar size, which reduces the risk of

triggering heap overflows and limits influencing slab cache layout.

Enable sanity checks and red zoning via slab debugging. This will implicitly

disable kernel pointer hashing, leaking very sensitive information to root. Re-enabling hashed pointers will be possible when using Linux kernel >= 6.17. https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/253

Enable memory zeroing at both allocation and free time, which mitigates some

use-after-free vulnerabilities by erasing sensitive information in memory.

Enable the kernel page allocator to randomize free lists to limit some data

exfiltration and ROP attacks, especially during the early boot process.

Enable randomization of the kernel stack offset on syscall entries to harden

against memory corruption attacks.

Disable vsyscalls as they are vulnerable to ROP attacks and have now been

replaced by vDSO.

Restrict access to debugfs by not registering the file system since it can

contain sensitive information.

Force immediate system reboot on the occurrence of a single kernel panic, reducing the

risk and impact of denial-of-service attacks and both cold and warm boot attacks.

Force the kernel to immediately panic on both "oopses" (which can potentially indicate

and thwart certain kernel exploitation attempts) and kernel warnings in the WARN() path.

Optional - Force the kernel to immediately panic if it becomes tainted. Some reasons include

upon using out of specification hardware, bad page states, ACPI tables being overridden, severe firmware bugs, in-kernel tests run, or mutating fwctl debug operations. It can also include the loading of proprietary or out-of-tree modules.

Prevent sensitive kernel information leaks in the console during boot.

Enable the kernel Electric-Fence sampling-based memory safety error detector

which can identify heap out-of-bounds access, use-after-free, and invalid-free errors.

Disable 32-bit vDSO mappings as they are a legacy compatibility feature.

Use kCFI as the default CFI implementation as it is more resilient to attacks that are

able to write arbitrary executables into memory omitting the necessary hash validation.

Disable support for all 32-bit x86 processes and syscalls to reduce attack surface.

Disable the EFI persistent storage feature which prevents the kernel from writing crash logs

and other persistent data to either the UEFI variable storage or ACPI ERST backends.

Restrict processes from modifying their own memory mappings unless actively done via

ptrace() for debugging in order to limit self-modification which can trigger exploits.

Prevent runaway privileged processes from writing to block devices that are mounted by

filesystems to protect against filesystem corruption and kernel crashes.

Optional - On compatible AMD CPUs enable Secure Memory Encryption (SME) to protect against

cold boot attacks and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) for further guest memory isolation.

Direct memory access:

Enable strict IOMMU translation to protect against some DMA attacks via the use

of both CPU manufacturer-specific drivers and kernel settings.

Clear the busmaster bit on all PCI bridges during the EFI hand-off, which disables

DMA before the IOMMU is configured. May cause boot failure on certain hardware.

Entropy:

Do not credit the CPU seeds as an entropy source at boot in order to maximize the

absolute quantity of entropy in the combined pool. This is desirable for all cryptographic operations to avoid reliance on proprietary RDRAND and RDSEED CPU instructions for random number generation that have long history of being defective.

Do not credit the bootloader seeds as an entropy source at boot to maximize the

absolute quantity of entropy in the combined pool. This is desirable for all cryptographic operations as seeds passed by the bootloader could be tampered.

Obtain more entropy at boot from RAM as the runtime memory allocator is being

initialized to maximize the absolute quantity of entropy in the combined pool.

Networking:

Optional - Disable the entire IPv6 stack to reduce attack surface.

mmap ASLR

The bits of entropy used for mmap ASLR for all CPU architectures are maxed

out via /usr/libexec/security-misc/mmap-rnd-bits (set to the values of CONFIGARCHMMAPRNDBITSMAX and CONFIGARCHMMAPRNDCOMPATBITS_MAX that the kernel was built with), therefore improving its effectiveness.

Kernel Self Protection Project (KSPP) compliance status

Summary:

security-misc is in full compliance with KSPP recommendations wherever feasible. However, there are a few cases of partial or non-compliance due to technical limitations.

KSPP Recommended Settings

Full compliance:

More than 30 kernel boot parameters and over 30 sysctl settings are fully aligned with the KSPP's recommendations.

Partial compliance:

Kernel boot parameter procmem.forceoverride=never

Restrict processes from modifying their own memory mappings by completely disables use of /proc/PID/mem to write to protected pages. Can be enabled easily if required.

security-misc pull request #332

Non-compliance:

sysctl user.maxusernamespaces=0

Disables user namespaces entirely. Not recommended due to the potential for widespread breakages.

security-misc pull request #263

sysctl fs.binfmt_misc.status=0

Disables the registration of interpreters for miscellaneous binary formats. Currently not feasible due to compatibility issues with Firefox.

Kernel boot parameter hash_pointers=always

Force all exposed pointers to be hashed and must be used in combination with the already enabled slab_debug=FZ kernel boot parameter. Currently is not possible as requires Linux kernel >= 6.17.

Kernel Modules

Kernel Module Signature Verification

Not yet implemented due to issues:

https://forums.whonix.org/t/enforce-kernel-module-software-signature-verification-module-signing-disallow-kernel-module-loading-by-default/7880/64
https://github.com/dell/dkms/issues/359

See:

/etc/default/grub.d/40signedmodules.cfg

Disables the loading of new modules to the kernel after the fact

Not yet implemented due to issues:

https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/pull/152

A systemd service dynamically sets the kernel parameter modules_disabled to 1, preventing new modules from being loaded. Since this isn't configured directly within systemctl, it does not break the loading of legitimate and necessary modules for the user, like drivers etc., given they are plugged in on startup.

Blacklist and disable kernel modules

Conntrack: Deactivates Netfilter's connection tracking helper module which increases kernel attack surface by enabling superfluous functionality such as IRC parsing in the kernel. See /etc/modprobe.d/30security-miscconntrack.conf.

Certain kernel modules are blacklisted by default to reduce attack surface via /etc/modprobe.d/30security-miscblacklist.conf. Blacklisting prevents kernel modules from automatically starting.

CD-ROM/DVD: Blacklist modules required for CD-ROM/DVD devices.

Miscellaneous: Blacklist an assortment of other modules to prevent them from

automatically loading.

Specific kernel modules are entirely disabled to reduce attack surface via /etc/modprobe.d/30security-miscdisable.conf. Disabling prohibits kernel modules from starting. This approach should not be considered comprehensive; rather, it is a form of badness enumeration. Any potential candidates for future disabling should first be blacklisted for a suitable amount of time.

Hardware modules:

Optional - Bluetooth: Disabled to reduce attack surface.

Optional - CPU MSRs: Disabled as can be abused to access other trust domains

and write to arbitrary memory.

FireWire (IEEE 1394): Disabled as they are often vulnerable to DMA attacks.

GPS: Disable GPS-related modules such as those required for Global Navigation

Satellite Systems (GNSS).

Optional - Intel Management Engine (ME): Provides some disabling of the interface

between the Intel ME and the OS. May lead to breakages in places such as firmware updates, security, power management, display, and DRM. See discussion: https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/239

Intel Platform Monitoring Technology (PMT) Telemetry: Disable some functionality

of the Intel PMT components.

Thunderbolt: Disabled as they are often vulnerable to DMA attacks.

File system modules:

File Systems: Disable uncommon and legacy file systems.

Network File Systems: Disable uncommon and legacy network file systems.

Networking modules:

Network Protocols: A wide array of uncommon and legacy network protocols and drivers

are disabled.

Miscellaneous modules:

Amateur Radios: Disabled to reduce attack surface.

Floppy Disks: Disabled to reduce attack surface.

Framebuffer (fbdev): Disabled as these drivers are well-known to be buggy, cause

kernel panics, and are generally only used by legacy devices.

Joysticks: Disabled to reduce attack surface.

Replaced Modules: Disabled legacy drivers that have been entirely replaced and

superseded by newer drivers.

RNDIS - Disabled as believed to have unfixable buffer overflow issues.

Optional - USB Video Device Class: Disables the USB-based video streaming driver for

devices like some webcams and digital camcorders.

Optional - Vivid: Disabled to reduce attack surface given previous vulnerabilities.

Other

A systemd service clears the System.map file on boot as these contain kernel

pointers. The file is completely overwritten with zeroes to ensure it cannot be recovered. See:

/etc/kernel/postinst.d/30_remove-system-map

/usr/lib/systemd/system/remove-system-map.service

/usr/libexec/security-misc/remove-system.map

Coredumps are disabled as they may contain important information such as

encryption keys or passwords. See:

/etc/security/limits.d/30_security-misc.conf

/usr/lib/sysctl.d/30_security-misc.conf

/usr/lib/systemd/coredump.conf.d/30_security-misc.conf

PStore is disabled as crash logs can contain sensitive system data such as

kernel version, hostname, and users. See:

/usr/lib/systemd/pstore.conf.d/30_security-misc.conf

An initramfs hook used to set the sysctl values in /etc/sysctl.conf and

/etc/sysctl.d before init is executed so sysctl hardening is enabled as early as possible. This was implemented for initramfs-tools only because this is not needed for dracut as dracut does that by default, at least on systemd enabled systems. Not researched for non-systemd systems by the author of this part of the readme. This is no longer implemented for initramfs-tools as initramfs-tools support has been deprecated.

Kernel console output is suppressed during boot by setting loglevel=0 and

quiet boot parameters to prevent sensitive kernel information from being visible to physical observers. Must be paired with the kernel.printk sysctl for complete effect. See:

/etc/default/grub.d/41quietboot.cfg

/usr/lib/sysctl.d/30_silent-kernel-printk.conf

Recovery mode is restricted by removing GRUB recovery entries, halting

instead of dropping to an emergency shell during initramfs failures, and disabling the dracut recovery shell entirely. This prevents physical attackers from booting into a root shell via recovery options. See: - /etc/default/grub.d/41recoveryrestrict.cfg - Recovery Mode - Emergency Recovery Console - Is not an implementation of Protecting the Kernel Command Line.

Network hardening

Not yet implemented due to issues:

https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/pull/145

https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/184

Unlike version 4, IPv6 addresses can provide information not only about the

originating network but also the originating device. We prevent this from happening by enabling the respective privacy extensions for IPv6.

In addition, we deny the capability to track the originating device in the

network at all, by using randomized MAC addresses per connection by default.

See:

/usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/80_ipv6-privacy.conf
/usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/80_randomize-mac.conf
/usr/lib/systemd/networkd.conf.d/80_ipv6-privacy-extensions.conf

Bluetooth Hardening

Bluetooth Status: Enabled but Defaulted to Off

Default Behavior: Although Bluetooth capability is 'enabled' in the kernel,

security-misc-desktop deviates from the usual behavior by starting with Bluetooth turned off at system start. This setting remains until the user explicitly opts to activate Bluetooth.

User Control: Users have the freedom to easily switch Bluetooth on and off

in the usual way, exercising their own discretion. This can be done via the Bluetooth toggle through the usual way, that is either through GUI settings application or command line commands.

Enhanced Privacy Settings: We enforce more private defaults for Bluetooth

connections. This includes the use of private addresses and strict timeout settings for discoverability and visibility.

Security Considerations: Despite these measures, it's important to note that

Bluetooth technology, by its nature, may still be prone to exploits due to its history of security vulnerabilities. Thus, we recommend users to opt-out of using Bluetooth when possible.

Configuration Details

Bluetooth controllers are not automatically enabled at boot (AutoEnable=false).
Pairable and discoverable modes time out after 30 seconds of inactivity.
Only one Bluetooth controller is exposed to the system (MaxControllers=1).
Resolvable Private Addresses (RPAs) are enforced (Privacy=network/on),

preventing MAC-based tracking.

See:

/etc/bluetooth/30_security-misc.conf
For more information and discussion: GitHub Pull Request

Understanding Bluetooth Terms

Disabling Bluetooth: This means the absence of the Bluetooth kernel module.

When disabled, Bluetooth is non-existent in the system - it cannot be seen, set, configured, or interacted with in any way.

Turning Bluetooth On/Off: This refers to a software toggle. Normally, on

Debian systems, Bluetooth is 'on' when the system boots up. It actively searches for known devices to auto-connect and may be discoverable or visible under certain conditions. Our default ensures that Bluetooth is off on startup. However, it remains 'enabled' in the kernel, meaning the kernel can use the Bluetooth protocol and has the necessary modules.

Quick Toggle Guide

Turning Bluetooth On: Simply click the Bluetooth button in the settings

application or on the tray, and switch the toggle. It's a straightforward action that can be completed in less than a second.

Turning Bluetooth Off: Follow the same procedure as turning it on but switch

the toggle to the off position.

Entropy collection improvements

The jitterentropy_rng kernel module is loaded as early as possible during

boot to gather more entropy via the /usr/lib/modules-load.d/30_security-misc.conf configuration file.

Distrusts the CPU for initial entropy at boot as it is not possible to

audit, may contain weaknesses or a backdoor. Similarly, do not credit the bootloader seed for initial entropy. For references, see: /etc/default/grub.d/40kernelhardening.cfg

Gathers more entropy during boot if using the linux-hardened kernel patch.

Restrictive mount options

A systemd service is triggered on boot to remount all sensitive partitions and directories with significantly more secure hardened mount options. Since this would require manual tuning for a given specific system, we handle it by creating a very solid configuration file for that very system on package installation.

Not enabled by default yet. In development. Help welcome.

https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Dev/remount-secure
https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/157
https://forums.whonix.org/t/re-mount-home-and-other-with-noexec-and-nosuid-among-other-useful-mount-options-for-better-security/

Root access restrictions

su is restricted to only users within the group sudo which prevents

users from using su to gain root access or to switch user accounts - /usr/share/pam-configs/wheel-security-misc (which results in a change in file /etc/pam.d/common-auth).

Add user root to group sudo. This is required due to the above

restriction so that logging in from a virtual console is still possible - debian/security-misc-shared.preinst

Abort login for users with locked passwords -

/usr/libexec/security-misc/pam-abort-on-locked-password.

Logging into the root account from a virtual, serial, or other console is

prevented by shipping an existing and empty /etc/securetty file (deletion of /etc/securetty has a different effect).

This package does not yet automatically lock the root account password. It is not clear if this would be sane in such a package, although it is recommended to lock and expire the root account.

In new Kicksecure builds, the root account will be locked by package dist-base-files.

See:

https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Root
https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Dev/Permissions
https://forums.whonix.org/t/restrict-root-access/7658

However, a locked root password will break rescue and emergency shell. Therefore, this package enables passwordless rescue and emergency shell. This is the same solution that Debian will likely adopt for the Debian installer: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=802211

See:

/etc/systemd/system/emergency.service.d/override.conf
/etc/systemd/system/rescue.service.d/override.conf

Adverse security effects can be prevented by setting up BIOS Password protection, Bootloader Password protection, and/or Full Disk Encryption (FDE).

Console lockdown

This uses pam_access to allow members of group console to use the console but restrict everyone else (except members of group console-unrestricted) from using the console with ancient, unpopular login methods such as /bin/login over networks as this might be exploitable. (CVE-2001-0797)

This is not enabled by default in this package since this package does not know which users should be added to group 'console' and thus, would break console access.

See:

/usr/share/pam-configs/console-lockdown-security-misc
/etc/security/access-security-misc.conf

Brute force attack protection

User accounts are locked after 50 failed login attempts using pam_faillock.

The failure tracking window is 7 days (fail_interval=604800).
Locked accounts never auto-unlock (unlock_time=never) and require manual

administrator intervention via the faillock command.

The root account can also be locked (evendenyroot).
Faillock is skipped for certain remote services (e.g. sshd, dovecot) to

prevent remote lockout attacks.

Informational output during Linux PAM:

Show failed and remaining password attempts.
Document unlock procedure if Linux user account got locked.
Point out that there is no password feedback for su.
Explain locked root account if locked.

See:

/usr/share/pam-configs/faillock-preauth-security-misc
/usr/share/pam-configs/unix-faillock-security-misc
/etc/security/faillock.conf.security-misc
/usr/libexec/security-misc/pam-info
/usr/libexec/security-misc/pam-abort-on-locked-password
/usr/libexec/security-misc/pamfaillocknotifx

Access rights restrictions

Strong user account separation

Permission Lockdown

Read, write, and execute access for "others" are removed during package installation, upgrade, or PAM mkhomedir for all users who have home folders in /home by running, for example:

chmod o-rwx /home/user

This will be done only once per folder in /home so users who wish to relax file permissions are free to do so. This is to protect files in a home folder that were previously created with lax file permissions prior to the installation of this package.

See:

debian/security-misc-shared.postinst
/usr/libexec/security-misc/permission-lockdown
/usr/share/pam-configs/mkhomedir-security-misc

umask

The default umask is set to 027 for files created by non-root users, such as the account user.

This is done using the PAM module pam_mkhomedir.so umask=027.

This configuration ensures that files created by non-root users cannot be read by other non-root users by default. While Permission Lockdown already protects the /home folder, this setting extends protection to other folders such as /tmp.

group read permissions are not removed. This is unnecessary due to Debian's use of User Private Groups (UPGs). See also: https://wiki.debian.org/UserPrivateGroups

The default umask is unchanged for root because configuration files created in /etc by the system administrator would otherwise be unreadable by "others," potentially breaking applications. Examples include /etc/firefox-esr and /etc/thunderbird. Additionally, the umask is set to 022 via sudoers configuration, ensuring that files created as root are world-readable, even when using commands such as sudo vi /etc/file or sudo -i; touch /etc/file.

When using sudo, the umask is set to 022 rather than 027 to ensure compatibility with commands such as sudo vi /etc/configfile and sudo -i; touch /etc/file.

See:

/usr/share/pam-configs/umask-security-misc

SUID / SGID removal and permission hardening

SUID / SGID removal

A systemd service removes SUID / SGID bits from non-essential binaries as these are often used in privilege escalation attacks.

File permission hardening

Various file permissions are reset with more secure and hardened defaults. These include but are not limited to:

Limiting /home and /root to the root only.
Limiting crontab to root as well as all the configuration files for cron.
Limiting the configuration for cups and ssh.
Protecting the information of sudoers from others.
Protecting various system-relevant files and modules.

permission-hardener

permission-hardener removes SUID / SGID bits from non-essential binaries as these are often used in privilege escalation attacks. It is enabled by default and applied at security-misc package installation and upgrade time.

There is also an optional systemd unit which does the same at boot time that can be enabled by running systemctl enable permission-hardener.service as root. The hardening at boot time is not the default because this slows down the boot process too much.

See:

/usr/bin/permission-hardener
debian/security-misc-shared.postinst
/usr/lib/systemd/system/permission-hardener.service
/usr/lib/permission-hardener.d
https://forums.whonix.org/t/disable-suid-binaries/7706
https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/SUIDDisablerandPermissionHardener

Access rights relaxations

This is not enabled yet because hidepid is not enabled by default.

Calls to pkexec are redirected to lxqt-sudo because pkexec is incompatible with hidepid=2.

See:

/usr/bin/pkexec.security-misc
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=860040
https://forums.whonix.org/t/cannot-use-pkexec/8129

Emergency shutdown

Forcibly powers off the system if the drive the system booted from is

removed from the system.

Forcibly powers off the system if a user-configurable "panic key sequence"

is pressed (Ctrl+Alt+End by default).

Forcibly powers off the system if

sudo /run/emerg-shutdown --instant-shutdown is called.

Optional - Forcibly powers off the system if shutdown gets stuck for longer

than a user-configurable number of seconds (30 by default). Requires tuning by the user to function properly, see notes in /etc/security-misc/emerg-shutdown/30securitymisc.conf.

A dracut module bundles the emergency shutdown binary, its systemd service, and configuration files into the initramfs so the panic key sequence is available even during early boot. A udev rule restarts the service whenever a keyboard is added or removed. See:

/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/99emerg-shutdown/module-setup.sh
/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/95-emerg-shutdown.rules

File Manager D-Bus shim

To prevent malicious applications from opening malicious content using D-Bus, a shim is present that listens for org.freedesktop.FileManager1 D-Bus method calls. This shim displays a confirmation window for every request an application makes to open one or more directories, while also ensuring applications can only try to open directories (not files), and cannot try to open directories that the user cannot access.

See:

/usr/src/security-misc/fm-shim-backend.c
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/fmshimfrontend/fmshimfrontend.py
/usr/bin/fm-shim-frontend
/usr/libexec/security-misc/build-fm-shim-backend
/usr/lib/systemd/user/fm-shim.service

Application-specific hardening

sudo: Enables "Defaults !fqdn", which disables attempts to

determine the local machine's FQDN via DNS as this can leak the machine's hostname in cleartext to the configured DNS server and cause sudo unable to resolve host errors. security-misc-desktop only. Not enabled on security-misc-server since there has been no research yet if this can break server use cases.

apt: Enables "apt-get --error-on=any" which makes apt exit non-zero for

transient failures. - /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/40error-on-any.

apt: Enables APT seccomp-BPF sandboxing - /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/40sandbox.
Dolphin: Deactivates previews in Dolphin.
Nautilus: Deactivates previews in Nautilus -

/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/30_security-misc.gschema.override.

Thunar: Deactivates thumbnails, disables automatic volume management,

hides the network bookmark, and sets the date format to ISO in Thunar. - Rationale: lower attack surface when using the file manager - https://forums.whonix.org/t/disable-preview-in-file-manager-by-default/18904

gnupg: Security and privacy enhancements for gnupg's config file

/etc/skel/.gnupg/gpg.conf. See also: - https://raw.github.com/ioerror/torbirdy/master/gpg.conf - https://github.com/ioerror/torbirdy/pull/11

SSH client: Hardens the SSH client by restricting key exchange to

post-quantum-hybrid and modern algorithms, limiting host and public key authentication to Ed25519 only, requiring the use of strong ciphers, and enforcing encrypt-then-MAC. /etc/ssh/sshconfig.d/30security-misc.conf

SSH server: Hardens the SSH server with the same cryptographic restrictions

as the client. Additionally disables password and keyboard-interactive authentication, disables agent/TCP/X11 forwarding, limits authentication attempts to 3, and suppresses the Debian version banner. /etc/ssh/sshdconfig.d/30security-misc.conf

flatpak: Configures flatpak to require authentication for all software installation

and management tasks including updates. Ships /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.Flatpak.policy.security-misc, diverts/hides /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/org.freedesktop.Flatpak.rules.

git: Disables symlinks to protect against known CVEs and enables object

integrity checking (fsckObjects) on transfer, fetch, and receive operations. /etc/gitconfig

Project scope of application-specific hardening

Added in December 2023.

Before sending pull requests to harden arbitrary applications, please note the scope of security-misc is limited to default installed applications in Kicksecure and Whonix. This includes:

VLC Media Player, KeePassXC
Debian Specific System Components (APT, DPKG)
System Services (NetworkManager IPv6 privacy options, MAC address

randomization)

Actually used development utilities such as git.

It will not be possible to review and merge "1500" settings profiles for arbitrary applications outside of this context.

The main objective of security-misc is to harden Kicksecure and its derivatives, such as Whonix, by implementing robust security settings. It's designed to be compatible with Debian, reflecting a commitment to clean implementation and sound design principles. However, it's important to note that security-misc is a component of Kicksecure, not a substitute for it. The intention isn't to recreate Kicksecure within security-misc. Instead, specific security enhancements, like recommending a curated list of security-focused default packages (e.g., libpam-tmpdir), should be integrated directly into those appropriate areas of Kicksecure (e.g. kicksecure-meta-packages).

Discussion: https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/154

Development philosophy

Added in December 2023.

Maintainability is a key priority \[1\]. Before modifying settings in the downstream security-misc, it's essential to first engage with upstream developers to propose these changes as defaults. This step should only be bypassed if there's a clear, prior indication from upstream that such changes won't be accepted. Additionally, before implementing any workarounds, consulting with upstream is necessary to avoid future unmaintainable complexity.

If debugging features are disabled, pull requests won't be merged until there is a corresponding pull request for the debug-misc package to re-enable these. This is to avoid configuring the system into a corner where it can no longer be debugged.

\[1\] https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Dev/maintainability

Opt-in hardening

Some hardening is opt-in as it causes too much breakage to be enabled by default.

An optional systemd service mounts /proc with hidepid=2 at boot to

prevent users from seeing another user's processes. This is disabled by default because it is incompatible with pkexec. It can be enabled by executing systemctl enable proc-hidepid.service as root.

A systemd service restricts /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/bus, /proc/scsi, and

/sys to the root user. This hides a lot of hardware identifiers from unprivileged users and increases security as /sys exposes a lot of information that shouldn't be accessible to unprivileged users. As this will break many things, it is disabled by default and can optionally be enabled by executing systemctl enable hide-hardware-info.service as root.

USBGuard

USB device authorization rules are shipped for USBGuard. All unrecognized USB devices plugged in at runtime are blocked by default (ImplicitPolicyTarget=block), while devices connected at boot time and some likely-safe devices are allowed. The service is suppressed if the system lacks a USB controller.

Reject USB devices with undefined or non-standard interface classes.
Reject devices that combine a keyboard/mouse (HID) interface with

non-HID interfaces, which is a common indicator of a BadUSB attack.

Reject devices with RNDIS interfaces due to suspected protocol-level

buffer overflow vulnerabilities.

Allow only one keyboard and one mouse at a time.
Allow USB audio, video, mass storage, and hub devices.
IPC access is granted to members of the sudo and qubes groups.

See:

/etc/usbguard/usbguard-daemon.conf.security-misc
/etc/usbguard/rules.d/30_security-misc.conf
/etc/usbguard/IPCAccessControl.d/
/usr/lib/systemd/system/usbguard.service.d/30_security-misc.conf

Systemd preset defaults

The following services are explicitly disabled by default in the systemd preset because these are work-in-progress or can severely break functionality. These can be opted-in by the user:

hide-hardware-info.service - Restricts /sys and /proc hardware info.

Testers-only. See hide-hardware-info.service.

permission-hardener.service - Applies permission hardening at boot.

See permission-hardener.service.

remount-secure.service - Remounts filesystems with hardened options.

In development. See Remount Secure.

proc-hidepid.service - Mounts /proc with hidepid=2.

See hidepid.

harden-module-loading.service - Disables kernel module loading after boot.

Harden Module Loading can cause major breakage.

ensure-shutdown.service - Forced shutdown watchdog.

In development.

ensure-shutdown-trigger.service - Companion trigger for forced shutdown.

In development.

memlockd.service - Memory locking daemon (used internally by emerg-shutdown).

Can be enabled if the user intents to use memlockd.service.

See: /usr/lib/systemd/system-preset/50-security-misc.preset

Miscellaneous

Hardened malloc compatibility for haveged workaround

/usr/lib/systemd/system/haveged.service.d/30_security-misc.conf

Set dracut reproducible=yes setting.

/etc/dracut.conf.d/30-security-misc.conf

A virusforget script detects unauthorized changes to a set of sensitive

files by comparing them against a stored baseline. Work in progress - the implementation will likely change significantly. /usr/libexec/security-misc/virusforget

A custom askpass helper provides a GUI password prompt via yad for

superuser actions. /usr/libexec/security-misc/askpass

A helper script checks whether a USB controller is present on the system,

used as a conditional for USBGuard services. /usr/libexec/security-misc/check-for-usb-controller

A VirtualBox-specific workaround kills the VBoxDRMClient process during

shutdown to prevent it from blocking a clean unmount of /tmp. Only activates inside VirtualBox VMs. /usr/lib/systemd/system/kill-vboxdrmclient-on-shutdown.service

PAM conditional helpers (pamonlyiflogin, pamonlyifsu) allow

specific PAM rules to apply only to certain services. /usr/libexec/security-misc/pamonlyif_login /usr/libexec/security-misc/pamonlyif_su

Unsafe logins (such as logging into non-sysmaint accounts while booted in

sysmaint mode, or elevating privileges from an unprivileged account to a passwordless privileged account) are blocked. Enforces account/session separation between sysmaint and regular user accounts. /usr/libexec/security-misc/block-unsafe-logins /usr/share/pam-configs/block-unsafe-logins-security-misc

/usr/share/security-misc/ is added to XDGCONFIGDIRS at login via

/etc/profile.d/30_security-misc.sh so that security-misc XDG configuration overrides (e.g. Dolphin, Thunar) are available system-wide.

An AppArmor tunable creates aliases for security-misc's config-package-dev

displaced files (e.g. common-session, login.defs, securetty) so that AppArmor policies continue to work with the diverted paths. /etc/apparmor.d/tunables/home.d/security-misc

A custom sysinit-post.target provides a synchronization point between

sysinit.target and basic.target for services that must run after early-boot initialization but before general services. /usr/lib/systemd/system/sysinit-post.target

A systemd drop-in adds the sysfs supplementary group to all user session

managers (user@.service), granting users group-based read access to /sys entries restricted by hide-hardware-info.service. /usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service.d/sysfs.conf

LKRG (Linux Kernel Runtime Guard) VirtualBox compatibility: automatically

manages LKRG sysctl settings when VirtualBox host software is detected. /usr/share/security-misc/lkrg/lkrg-virtualbox

Legal

/usr/lib/issue.d/20_security-misc.issue

https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/pull/167

Package split

The security-misc source code repository builds three different software packages:

security-misc-shared
security-misc-desktop
security-misc-server

The guiding principle has been: if there are no adverse effects, or if it is unclear whether a file belongs in the desktop or server package, then it will be placed in the shared package.

The hash symbol ("#") is used as a separator character.

Some clear examples where files belong only in security-misc-desktop:

/usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/80_ipv6-privacy#security-misc-desktop.conf
/usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/80_randomize-mac#security-misc-desktop.conf
./usr/lib/systemd/networkd.conf.d/80_ipv6-privacy-extensions.conf#security-misc-desktop

This is because enabling IPv6 privacy extensions or MAC randomization on a server will not increase privacy but instead carries a high risk of breaking connectivity.

A less clear example is /etc/bluetooth/30_security-misc.conf#security-misc-desktop. Also refer to the above chapter "Bluetooth Hardening". A server usually doesn't have Bluetooth, so on a server it may instead be useful to fully disable Bluetooth.

Some clear examples where files belong only in security-misc-shared:

/etc/profile.d/30_security-misc.sh#security-misc-shared indeed belongs in security-misc-shared and not security-misc-desktop. For the reason, see below.

Other considerations have been:

Just because it's a server, it does not follow that there is no GUI (graphical user interface) desktop environment.
Just because it's a desktop computer, it doesn't mean it's a GUI and not a CLI (command line interface).
Therefore, the split is between security-misc-desktop and security-misc-server.
Therefore, the split is not between security-misc-gui and security-misc-cli.

\[1\] https://github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc/issues/187