Audit and harden a service's systemd sandbox with systemd-analyze security and close the top exposures
domain: systemd · 7 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Ensure the unit is active first (systemctl start <name>.service) then run systemd-analyze security <name>.service
Read the per-option EXPOSURE column headers (each sandbox flag contributes to the overall security score) and note the highest-risk lines
Fix the worst exposures by adding the corresponding options to the [Service] section: NoNewPrivileges=yes, PrivateTmp=yes, ProtectSystem=strict, ProtectHome=yes, ProtectKernelTunables=yes, ProtectKernelModules=yes, ProtectControlGroups=yes, RestrictSUIDSGID=yes, RestrictRealtime=yes, MemoryDenyWriteExecute=yes, LockPersonality=yes
Enable the network and filesystem restrictions per the service's real needs (read systemd.exec(5) for each flag's semantics before enabling)
Run systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart <name>.service and re-run systemd-analyze security to confirm the score/applied framework improved
If a sandbox flag breaks the service, journalctl -u <name> surfaces the EPERM/ECONNREFUSED, then relax just that option
Prefer an allow-list seccomp base for the biggest score reduction but test thoroughly
Known gotchas
systemd-analyze security --offline evaluates without running; --offline=false inspects the running unit's actual effective settings (important because some options are conditional)
The analyzer reports potential exposures even for options irrelevant to your process; fix high-impact ones such as ProtectSystem, PrivateTmp and NoNewPrivileges first
Setting User=nobody for a service that needs to read root-only secrets will break it - scope the hardening to what the workload actually does
systemd-analyze security rates the unit configuration, not the code - an apparently tight unit can still be loaded service exploit-sensitive (e.g. keep seccomp allow-list)
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