Title

The AIX cron and crontab directories must be group-owned by cron. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Incorrect group ownership of the cron or crontab directories could permit unauthorized users the ability to alter cron jobs and run automated jobs as privileged users. Failure to give ownership of cron or crontab directories to root or to bin provides the designated owner and unauthorized users with the potential to access sensitive information or change the system configuration which could weaken the system's security posture.

Check Content

Check the group owner of the "crontab" directory using command: # ls -ld /var/spool/cron/crontabs drwxrwx--- 2 bin cron 256 Jan 25 12:33 /var/spool/cron/crontabs If the group owner of the "crontab" directory is not "cron", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Change the group owner of the "crontab" directory: # chgrp cron /var/spool/cron/crontabs

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-245569r991589_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-245569

Group Title: SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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