Title

RHEL 8 audit system must protect auditing rules from unauthorized change. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 system activity. In immutable mode, unauthorized users cannot execute changes to the audit system to potentially hide malicious activity and then put the audit rules back. A system reboot would be noticeable and a system administrator could then investigate the unauthorized changes. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029

Check Content

Verify the audit system prevents unauthorized changes with the following command: $ sudo grep "^\s*[^#]" /etc/audit/audit.rules | tail -1 -e 2 If the audit system is not set to be immutable by adding the "-e 2" option to the "/etc/audit/audit.rules", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the audit system to set the audit rules to be immutable by adding the following line to "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules" -e 2 Note: Once set, the system must be rebooted for auditing to be changed. It is recommended to add this option as the last step in securing the system.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-230402r1017208_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-230402

Group Title: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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