Title

The Ubuntu operating system must provision temporary user accounts with an expiration time of 72 hours or less. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

If temporary user accounts remain active when no longer needed or for an excessive period, these accounts may be used to gain unauthorized access. To mitigate this risk, automated termination of all temporary accounts must be set upon account creation. Temporary accounts are established as part of normal account activation procedures when there is a need for short-term accounts without the demand for immediacy in account activation. If temporary accounts are used, the Ubuntu operating system must be configured to automatically terminate these types of accounts after a DoD-defined time period of 72 hours. To address access requirements, the Ubuntu operating system may be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements.

Check Content

Verify the Ubuntu operating system expires temporary user accounts within 72 hours or less. For every existing temporary account, run the following command to obtain its account expiration information. # sudo chage -l system_account_name | grep expires Password expires : Aug 07, 2019 Account expires : Aug 07, 2019 Verify each of these accounts has an expiration date set within 72 hours of accounts' creation. If any temporary account does not expire within 72 hours of that account's creation, this is a finding.

Fix Text

If a temporary account must be created configure the system to terminate the account after a 72 hour time period with the following command to set an expiration date on it. Substitute "system_account_name" with the account to be created. # sudo chage -E $(date -d "+3 days" +%F) system_account_name

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-219329r610963_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-219329

Group Title: SRG-OS-000002-GPOS-00002

Expert Comments

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