Detections
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5.10 Ensure Secure Keyboard Entry Terminal.app Is Enabled

Information

Secure Keyboard Entry prevents other applications on the system and/or network from detecting and recording what is typed into Terminal. Unauthorized applications and malicious code could intercept keystrokes entered in the Terminal.

Enabling Secure Keyboard Entry minimizes the risk of a key logger detecting what is entered in Terminal.

Solution

Run the following command to ensure keyboard entries are secure in Terminal for every user that is non-compliant:

% /usr/bin/sudo -u <username> /usr/bin/defaults write -app Terminal SecureKeyboardEntry -bool true

Impact:

Enabling this in Terminal would prevent an application that is otherwise validly intercepting keyboard input from intercepting that input in Terminal.app. This could impact productivity tools.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/17466

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6, 800-53|CM-7, CSCv7|4.1, CSCv7|5.1, CSCv7|9.2

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 468ef2e4b6678100835facc7403d07964bf3ffce649cde55a933943d35fdc3f8