V-258831

Discussion

Any operating system providing too much information in error messages risks compromising the data and security of the structure, and content of error messages needs to be carefully considered by the organization. Organizations carefully consider the structure/content of error messages. The extent to which information systems are able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements. Information that could be exploited by adversaries includes, for example, erroneous logon attempts with passwords entered by mistake as the username, mission/business information that can be derived from (if not stated explicitly by) information recorded, and personal information, such as account numbers, social security numbers, and credit card numbers.

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command to verify permissions on the /var/log directory:

# stat -c "%n is owned by %U and group owned by %G with permissions of %a" /var/log

Expected result:

/var/log is owned by root and group owned by root with permissions of 755

If the /var/log directory is not owned by root, this is a finding.
If the /var/log directory is not group owned by root, this is a finding.
If the /var/log directory permissions are not set to 0755 or less, this is a finding.