Disable Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (abrtd)

Description

The Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (abrtd) daemon collects and reports crash data when an application crash is detected. Using a variety of plugins, abrtd can email crash reports to system administrators, log crash reports to files, or forward crash reports to a centralized issue tracking system such as RHTSupport.

The abrtd service can be disabled with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl disable abrtd.service

Rationale

Mishandling crash data could expose sensitive information about vulnerabilities in software executing on the system, as well as sensitive information from within a process’s address space or registers.

Remediation

Shell script

The following script can be run on the host to remediate the issue.

#!/bin/bash

SYSTEMCTL_EXEC='/usr/bin/systemctl'
"$SYSTEMCTL_EXEC" stop 'abrtd.service'
"$SYSTEMCTL_EXEC" disable 'abrtd.service'
# Disable socket activation if we have a unit file for it
"$SYSTEMCTL_EXEC" list-unit-files | grep -q '^abrtd.socket\>' && "$SYSTEMCTL_EXEC" disable 'abrtd.socket'
# The service may not be running because it has been started and failed,
# so let's reset the state so OVAL checks pass.
# Service should be 'inactive', not 'failed' after reboot though.
"$SYSTEMCTL_EXEC" reset-failed 'abrtd.service'

Ansible playbook

The following playbook can be run with Ansible to remediate the issue.

- name: Disable service abrtd
  service:
    name: "{{item}}"
    enabled: "no"
    state: "stopped"
  register: service_result
  failed_when: "service_result is failed and ('Could not find the requested service' not in service_result.msg)"
  with_items:
    - abrtd
  tags:
    - service_abrtd_disabled
    - unknown_severity
    - disable_strategy
    - low_complexity
    - low_disruption
    - NIST-800-53-AC-17(8)
    - NIST-800-53-CM-7


- name: Disable socket of service abrtd if applicable
  service:
    name: "{{item}}"
    enabled: "no"
    state: "stopped"
  register: socket_result
  failed_when: "socket_result is failed and ('Could not find the requested service' not in socket_result.msg)"
  with_items:
    - abrtd.socket
  tags:
    - service_abrtd_disabled
    - unknown_severity
    - disable_strategy
    - low_complexity
    - low_disruption
    - NIST-800-53-AC-17(8)
    - NIST-800-53-CM-7
PREVIEWING: may/unit-testing