Title

Emergency administrator accounts must never be automatically removed or disabled. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Emergency accounts are privileged accounts that are established in response to crisis situations where the need for rapid account activation is required. Therefore, emergency account activation may bypass normal account authorization processes. If these accounts are automatically disabled, system maintenance during emergencies may not be possible, thus adversely affecting system availability. Emergency accounts are different from infrequently used accounts (i.e., local logon accounts used by the organization's system administrators when network or normal logon/access is not available). Infrequently used accounts are not subject to automatic termination dates. Emergency accounts are accounts created in response to crisis situations, usually for use by maintenance personnel. The automatic expiration or disabling time period may be extended as needed until the crisis is resolved; however, it must not be extended indefinitely. A permanent account should be established for privileged users who need long-term maintenance accounts. To address access requirements, many Ubuntu operating systems can be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements.

Check Content

Verify the Ubuntu operating system is configured such that the emergency administrator account is never automatically removed or disabled. Check to see if the root account password or account expires with the following command: # sudo chage -l root Password expires :never If "Password expires" or "Account expires" is set to anything other than "never", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Replace "[Emergency_Administrator]" in the following command with the correct emergency administrator account. Run the following command as an administrator: # sudo chage -I -1 -M 99999 [Emergency_Administrator]

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-214958r610931_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-214958

Group Title: SRG-OS-000123-GPOS-00064

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.