Table of Contents

1.5.4 Ensure prelink is disabled (Scored)

Profile Applicability

Level 1 - Server 
Level 1 - Workstation

Description

prelink is a program that modifies ELF shared libraries and ELF dynamically linked binaries in such a way that the time needed for the dynamic linker to perform relocations at startup significantly decreases.

Rationale

The prelinking feature can interfere with the operation of AIDE, because it changes binaries. Prelinking can also increase the vulnerability of the system if a malicious user is able to compromise a common library such as libc.

Audit

Run the following command and verify prelink is not installed:

# dpkg -s prelink

Remediation

Run the following command to restore binaries to normal:

# prelink -ua

Run the following command to uninstall prelink:

# apt-get remove prelink