BIND 9.x Security Technical Implementation Guide

The BIND 9.x Security Technical Implementation Guide (V3 R4) has 73 STIG checks. New to STIG checklists? Read What is a STIG checklist?, CKL vs CKLB, and STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

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Severity

Version

V3 · R4

CurrentPublished Wed Sep 30 2026

The TSIG keys used with the BIND 9.x implementation must be owned by a privileged account.

BIND 9.x Security Technical Implementation Guide

Assessment Title

Rule Text

The TSIG keys used with the BIND 9.x implementation must be owned by a privileged account.

Description

Discussion Text

Incorrect ownership of a TSIG key file could allow an adversary to modify the file, thus defeating the security objective.

New to STIG checklists? Read What is a STIG checklist? and CKL vs CKLB.

Objective

V-272377

Rule

SV-272377r1205821_rule

Severity

medium

Rule Version

BIND-9X-001200

Documentable

false

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Rev 5

Assessment Procedure

Check Text

With the assistance of the DNS administrator, identify all of the TSIG keys used by the BIND 9.x implementation.

Identify the account that the "named" process is running as:

# ps -ef | grep named
named 3015 1 0 12:59 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/named -u named -t /var/named/chroot

With the assistance of the DNS administrator, determine the location of the TSIG keys used by the BIND 9.x implementation.

# ls -al <TSIG_Key_Location>
-rw-r-----. 1 named named 76 May 10 20:35 tsig-example.key

If any of the TSIG keys are not owned by the named account, this is a finding.

Implementation Procedure

Fix Text

Change the ownership of the TSIG keys to the named process it is running as.

# chown <named_proccess_owner> <TSIG_key_file>.

STIG check 13 of 73 in the BIND 9.x STIG checklist

← Previous · V-272376A unique TSIG key used by a BIND 9.x server must be generated for each pair of communicating hosts.Next · V-272378 →The TSIG keys used with the BIND 9.x implementation must be group owned by a privileged account.