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V-254234

CAT II (Medium)

Nutanix AOS must implement nonexecutable data to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.

Rule ID

SV-254234r958928_rule

STIG

Nutanix AOS 5.20.x OS Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R2

CCIs

CCI-002824

Discussion

Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in nonexecutable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can either be hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Examples of attacks are buffer overflow attacks.

Check Content

Nutanix AOS is configured to implement nonexecutable data to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.

$ sudo grep flags /proc/cpuinfo | grep -w nx
flags.       : fpu vme de …. nx pdpe1gb rdtscp...

If "flags" does not contain the "nx" flag, this is a finding.

Fix Text

If Nutanix AOS does not list 'nx' flag in the /proc/cpuinfo and the system's BIOS setup configuration permits toggling the No Execution bit, then set it to "enable".