Title

The RHEL 8 Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and System Administrator (SA) (at a minimum) must have mail aliases to be notified of an audit processing failure. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without this notification, the security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded. This requirement applies to each audit data storage repository (i.e., distinct information system component where audit records are stored), the centralized audit storage capacity of organizations (i.e., all audit data storage repositories combined), or both.

Check Content

Verify that the administrators are notified in the event of an audit processing failure. Check that the "/etc/aliases" file has a defined value for "root". $ sudo grep "postmaster:\s*root$" /etc/aliases If the command does not return a line, or the line is commented out, ask the system administrator to indicate how they and the ISSO are notified of an audit process failure. If there is no evidence of the proper personnel being notified of an audit processing failure, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure RHEL 8 to notify administrators in the event of an audit processing failure. Add/update the following line in "/etc/aliases": postmaster: root

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-230389r627750_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-230389

Group Title: SRG-OS-000046-GPOS-00022

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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