V-257173

Discussion

The audit service must be configured to create log files with the correct ownership to prevent normal users from reading audit logs. Audit logs contain sensitive data about the system and about users. If log files are set to be readable and writable only by root or administrative users with sudo, the risk is mitigated.

Check Content

Verify the macOS system is configured with audit log folders owned by root with the following command:

/usr/bin/sudo /bin/ls -lde $(/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/grep '^dir' /etc/security/audit_control | /usr/bin/awk -F: '{print $2}')

If the folders are not owned by root, this is a finding.