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← Back to Oracle Linux 8 Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-248768

CAT II (Medium)

OL 8 must generate audit records for any use of the "unix_chkpwd" command.

Rule ID

SV-248768r958412_rule

STIG

Oracle Linux 8 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V2R8

CCIs

CCI-000130CCI-000135CCI-000169CCI-000172CCI-002884

Discussion

Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "unix_chkpwd" command is a helper program for the pam_unix module that verifies the password of the current user. It also checks password and account expiration dates in shadow. It is not intended to be run directly from the command line and logs a security violation if done so. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215

Check Content

Verify OL 8 is configured to audit the execution of the "unix_chkpwd" command by running the following command: 
 
$ sudo grep -w unix_chkpwd /etc/audit/audit.rules 
 
-a always,exit -F path=/usr/sbin/unix_chkpwd -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k privileged-unix-update 
 
If the command does not return all lines or the lines are commented out, this is a finding. 
 
Note: The "-k" allows for specifying an arbitrary identifier, and the string after it does not need to match the example output above.

Fix Text

Configure OL 8 to audit the execution of the "unix_chkpwd" command by adding or updating the following lines to "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules": 
 
-a always,exit -F path=/usr/sbin/unix_chkpwd -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k privileged-unix-update 
 
The audit daemon must be restarted for the changes to take effect. To restart the audit daemon, run the following command: 
 
$ sudo service auditd restart