Title

PostgreSQL must include additional, more detailed, organization-defined information in the audit records for audit events identified by type, location, or subject. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Information system auditing capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis. Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. To support analysis, some types of events will need information to be logged that exceeds the basic requirements of event type, time stamps, location, source, outcome, and user identity. If additional information is not available, it could negatively impact forensic investigations into user actions or other malicious events. The organization must determine what additional information is required for complete analysis of the audited events. The additional information required is dependent on the type of information (e.g., sensitivity of the data and the environment within which it resides). At a minimum, the organization must employ either full-text recording of privileged commands or the individual identities of users of shared accounts, or both. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. Examples of detailed information the organization may require in audit records are full-text recording of privileged commands or the individual identities of shared account users.

Check Content

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA and PGLOG environment variables. See supplementary content APPENDIX-F and APPENDIX-I for instructions on configuring them. Review the system documentation to identify what additional information the organization has determined necessary. Check PostgreSQL settings by examining ${PGDATA?}/postgresql.conf to ensure additional auditing is configured and then examine existing audit records in ${PGLOG?}/<latest.log> to verify that all organization-defined additional, more detailed information is in the audit records for audit events identified by type, location, or subject after executing SQL commands that fall under the additional audit classes. If any additional information is defined and is not contained in the audit records, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure PostgreSQL audit settings to include all organization-defined detailed information in the audit records for audit events identified by type, location, or subject. Using pgaudit, PostgreSQL can be configured to audit these requests. See supplementary content APPENDIX-B for documentation on installing pgaudit. To ensure that logging is enabled, review supplementary content APPENDIX-C for instructions on enabling logging.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-233542r879569_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-233542

Group Title: SRG-APP-000101-DB-000044

Expert Comments

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