Title

MongoDB must utilize centralized management of the content captured in audit records generated by all components of MongoDB. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Without the ability to centrally manage the content captured in the audit records, identification, troubleshooting, and correlation of suspicious behavior would be difficult and could lead to a delayed or incomplete analysis of an ongoing attack. The content captured in audit records must be managed from a central location (necessitating automation). Centralized management of audit records and logs provides for efficiency in maintenance and management of records, as well as the backup and archiving of those records. MongoDB may write audit records to database tables, to files in the file system, to other kinds of local repository, or directly to a centralized log management system. Whatever the method used, it must be compatible with off-loading the records to the centralized system.

Check Content

MongoDB can be configured to write audit events to the syslog in Linux, but this is not available in Windows. Audit events can also be written to a file in either JSON on BSON format. Through the use of third-party tools or via syslog directly, audit records can be pushed to a centralized log management system. If a centralized tool for log management is not installed and configured to collect audit logs or syslogs, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Install a centralized syslog collecting tool and configured it as instructed in its documentation. To enable auditing and print audit events to the syslog in JSON format, specify the syslog for the --auditDestination setting: mongod --dbpath data/db --auditDestination syslog Alternatively, these options can also be specified in the configuration file: storage: dbPath: data/db auditLog: destination: syslog

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-221188r981952_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-221188

Group Title: SRG-APP-000356-DB-000314

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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