V-259515

Discussion

The system must be configured to require an administrator password in order to modify the systemwide preferences in System Settings. Some Preference Panes in System Settings contain settings that affect the entire system. Requiring a password to unlock these systemwide settings reduces the risk of a nonauthorized user modifying system configurations.

Check Content

Verify the macOS system is configured to require administrator privileges to modify systemwide settings with the following command:

authDBs=("system.preferences" "system.preferences.energysaver" "system.preferences.network" "system.preferences.printing" "system.preferences.sharing" "system.preferences.softwareupdate" "system.preferences.startupdisk" "system.preferences.timemachine")
result="1"
for section in ${authDBs[@]}; do
  if [[ $(/usr/bin/security -q authorizationdb read "$section" | /usr/bin/xmllint -xpath 'name(//*[contains(text(), "shared")]/following-sibling::*[1])' -) != "false" ]]; then
    result="0"
  fi
done
echo $result

If the result is not "1", this is a finding.