V-261862

Discussion

Without the capability to restrict which roles and individuals can select which events are audited, unauthorized personnel may be able to prevent or interfere with the auditing of critical events. Suppression of auditing could permit an adversary to evade detection. Misconfigured audits can degrade the system's performance by overwhelming the audit log. Misconfigured audits may also make it more difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.

Check Content

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA environment variable. Refer to APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA.

Check PostgreSQL settings and documentation to determine whether designated personnel are able to select which auditable events are being audited.

As the database administrator (shown here as "postgres"), verify the permissions for PGDATA:

$ ls -la ${PGDATA?}

If anything in PGDATA is not owned by the database administrator, this is a finding.

As the database administrator, run the following SQL:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ psql -c "\du"

Review the role permissions, if any role is listed as superuser but should not have that access, this is a finding.