Run a systemd service with MemoryDenyWriteExecute and RestrictRealtime to harden against JIT/exploit primitives

domain: systemd · 7 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Documented steps

  1. Add MemoryDenyWriteExecute=yes to the [Service] section: the service's memory mappings can be writable or executable but never both (W^X), blocking classic code-injection
  2. Add RestrictRealtime=yes to forbid SCHED_FIFO / SCHED_RR real-time scheduling and the use of mlock/mlockall
  3. Add LockPersonality=yes to prevent changing the process execution domain (personality(2)), and RestrictSUIDSGID=yes to block setuid/setgid binary transitions
  4. Set SystemCallArchitectures=native and a seccomp allow-list (SystemCallFilter=@system-service) to complement the memory protections
  5. Restart the unit (systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart <name>.service) and confirm the service starts cleanly
  6. Verify with grep -E 'NoNewPrivs|Seccomp' /proc/<pid>/status and by attempting (in a lab) a writable+executable mmap which should now fail with EPERM
  7. Watch journalctl -u <name> for SIGSYS/EPERM if a JIT (V8, JVM C2, etc.) needs W+X regions

Known gotchas

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