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V-258851

CAT II (Medium)

The Photon operating system must be configured to audit the loading and unloading of dynamic kernel modules.

Rule ID

SV-258851r933614_rule

STIG

VMware vSphere 8.0 vCenter Appliance Photon OS 4.0 Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R1

CCIs

CCI-000172

Discussion

Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00216, SRG-OS-000477-GPOS-00222

Check Content

At the command line, run the following command to verify an audit rule exists to audit kernel modules:

# auditctl -l | grep init_module

Expected result:

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S init_module -F key=modules
-a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S init_module -F key=modules

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.

Fix Text

Navigate to and open:

/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.STIG.rules

Add or update the following lines:

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S init_module -F key=modules
-a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S init_module -F key=modules

At the command line, run the following command to load the new audit rules:

# /sbin/augenrules --load

Note: An "audit.STIG.rules" file is provided with this guidance for placement in "/etc/audit/rules.d" that contains all rules needed for auditd.

Note: An older "audit.STIG.rules" may exist and may reference older "GEN" SRG IDs. This file can be removed and replaced as necessary with an updated one.