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TuxCare BlogPatching CentOS After End of Life: Your Guide to Staying Secure
by Rohan Timalsina
February 17, 2025 - TuxCare expert team
- Patching CentOS systems after their end dates is critical to maintain security and compliance.
- Opting for extended support solutions helps organizations maintain operational continuity without immediate migration.
- Endless Lifecycle Support (ELS) provides ongoing security patches for CentOS 6, 7, and 8 beyond their vendor-supported lifecycle.
CentOS has been the reliable operating system for millions of deployments, from small business servers to critical infrastructure. But the EOL (end-of-life) status of CentOS Linux has left users and organizations with a critical challenge: keeping their systems secure without official vendor support. While upgrading to a supported operating system is the long-term solution, it may not always be feasible in the short term.
For those still running EOL CentOS systems, patching CentOS becomes a key strategy to mitigate risks and maintain security. This article explores the dangers of running unpatched EOL systems and how extended support can bridge the gap effectively.
Why Patching CentOS Systems After EOL Is Critical
Once an operating system’s version is declared EOL, the vendor stops providing any updates, including critical security patches to that particular version. This leaves your systems completely vulnerable to known and future exploits.
The traditional CentOS Linux has been discontinued and replaced with the new CentOS Stream, a rolling-release distribution. As of now, all CentOS Linux versions have reached the end of life, including:
- CentOS 6: Reached its EOL on November 30th, 2020.
- CentOS 7: Reached its EOL on June 30th, 2024.
- CentOS 7.9 also reached End of Life (EOL) on June 30, 2024
- CentOS 8: Reached its EOL on December 31st, 2021.
Some major risks associated with end-of-life CentOS systems include:
Increased Attack Surface: Unpatched vulnerabilities in EOL systems make it easy for attackers to exploit such systems, potentially leading to breaches of data or service disruption.
Compliance Violations: Many regulatory frameworks require that businesses maintain up-to-date software as part of their compliance. Having your systems after their respective EOL dates without extended security can lead to costly fines and penalties.
Operational Instability: EOL systems often face compatibility issues with newer hardware and software, resulting in performance degradation, unexpected crashes, or downtime. For example, modern hardware may lack the drivers or kernel support required by older CentOS versions.
The Challenges of Patching CentOS After EOL
For organizations still relying on CentOS beyond its EOL date, securing their systems becomes significantly more challenging. While ignoring this situation (“doing nothing”) might seem like a temporary solution, it’s a dangerous gamble that exposes organizations to substantial security risks and potential business disruption. Organizations must choose between two main options: migrating to a supported operating system or leveraging extended support for continued security updates.
Migration Considerations
Migrating to alternative Linux distributions like AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux is a common recommendation. These community-driven distributions aim for compatibility with RHEL and offer a long-term solution. However, migrations are rarely simple. They often require detailed planning, testing, and execution, which can consume significant time and resources. This often makes immediate migration an impractical solution for many businesses.
Read our CentOS Migration Guide: A Seamless Shift to AlmaLinux to ensure a smooth transition.
Extended Support
When migration isn’t immediately feasible, extended support solutions offer a lifeline by providing vulnerability patches for EOL systems. Extended support ensures that organizations can maintain a secure and compliant environment without rushing through a migration process. This approach is particularly valuable for businesses that need time to plan and execute a carefully managed migration strategy or for those with mission-critical applications that cannot be easily migrated.
How TuxCare Simplifies Patching CentOS
TuxCare’s Endless Lifecycle Support (ELS) offers a solution for organizations that need to secure their EOL CentOS systems. With TuxCare, you can receive ongoing vulnerability patches for CentOS 6, CentOS 7, and CentOS 8 systems, enabling you to:
Maintain Security Post-EOL: Vulnerability patches are provided as long as needed after the vendor-supported lifecycle ends, ensuring systems remain protected against emerging threats.
Extend Planning Timelines: By securing your systems, you gain the flexibility to plan migrations at a pace that suits your organization.
Final Thoughts
As we’ve explored, simply “doing nothing” is not a viable option. The risks, from unpatched vulnerabilities to compliance headaches, are just too big to ignore. If you’re running an EOL CentOS system, patching CentOS must be a top priority to safeguard your infrastructure and maintain compliance. TuxCare simplifies this process by providing Endless Lifecycle Support (ELS) for end-of-life CentOS systems.
It provides security updates for a wide range of packages, covering 650+ packages for CentOS 7, 150+ for CentOS 6, and 130+ packages for CentOS 8. This includes critical components like the Linux kernel, Python, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, PHP, OpenJDK, Apache HTTP Server, and MySQL. Check out the full list of supported packages here.
