V-258868

Discussion

Once an attacker establishes access to a system, the attacker often attempts to create a persistent method of reestablishing access. One way to accomplish this is for the attacker to modify an existing account. Auditing account modification actions provides logging that can be used for forensic purposes. To address access requirements, many operating systems can be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access/auditing mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000467-GPOS-00211

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command to verify an audit rule exists to audit account modifications:

# auditctl -l | grep -E "(/etc/passwd|/etc/shadow|/etc/group|/etc/gshadow)"

Expected result:

-w /etc/passwd -p wa -k passwd
-w /etc/shadow -p wa -k shadow
-w /etc/group -p wa -k group
-w /etc/gshadow -p wa -k gshadow

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Note: This check depends on the "auditd" service to be in a running state for accurate results. The "auditd" service is enabled in control PHTN-40-000016.