4.6 Ensure Symbolic Links are Disabled

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Information

The symbolic-links and skip-symbolic-links options for MariaDB determine whether symbolic link support is available. When use of symbolic links is enabled, they have different effects depending on the host platform. When symbolic links are disabled, then symbolic links stored in files or entries in tables are not used by the database.

Rationale:

Prevents symbolic links from being used for database files. This is especially important when MariaDB is executing as root as arbitrary files may be overwritten. The symbolic-links option might allow someone to direct actions by the MariaDB server to other files and/or directories.

Solution

Perform the following actions to remediate this setting:

Open the MariaDB configuration file (mariadb.cnf)

Locate skip-symbolic-links in the configuration

Set the skip-symbolic-links to YES

Note: If skip-symbolic-links does not exist, add it to the configuration file in the mariadbd section.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/12270