V-257176

Discussion

The audit service must be configured to create log files with the correct permissions 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 files set to mode 440 or less with the following command:

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

If the files are not mode 440 or less, this is a finding.