Title

Permissions for the System event log must prevent access by nonprivileged accounts. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Maintaining an audit trail of system activity logs can help identify configuration errors, troubleshoot service disruptions, and analyze compromises that have occurred, as well as detect attacks. Audit logs are necessary to provide a trail of evidence in case the system or network is compromised. The System event log may be susceptible to tampering if proper permissions are not applied.

Check Content

Verify the permissions on the System event log (System.evtx). Standard user accounts or groups must not have greater than Read access. The default permissions listed below satisfy this requirement: Eventlog - Full Control SYSTEM - Full Control Administrators - Full Control The default location is the "%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\WINEVT\LOGS" directory. They may have been moved to another folder. If the permissions for these files are not as restrictive as the ACLs listed, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Ensure the permissions on the System event log (System.evtx) are configured to prevent standard user accounts or groups from having greater than Read access. The default permissions listed below satisfy this requirement: Eventlog - Full Control SYSTEM - Full Control Administrators - Full Control The default location is the "%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\WINEVT\LOGS" directory. If the location of the logs has been changed, when adding Eventlog to the permissions, it must be entered as "NT Service\Eventlog".

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-225312r569185_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-225312

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.