Cron and crontab directories must be owned by root or bin.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-980	GEN003120	SV-37474r1_rule	ECLP-1	Medium

Description
Incorrect ownership of the cron or crontab directories could permit unauthorized users the ability to alter cron jobs and run automated jobs as privileged users. Failure to give ownership of cron or crontab directories to root or to bin provides the designated owner and unauthorized users with the potential to access sensitive information or change the system configuration which could weaken the system's security posture.

Description

Incorrect ownership of the cron or crontab directories could permit unauthorized users the ability to alter cron jobs and run automated jobs as privileged users. Failure to give ownership of cron or crontab directories to root or to bin provides the designated owner and unauthorized users with the potential to access sensitive information or change the system configuration which could weaken the system's security posture.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2013-01-17

Details

Check Text ( C-36140r1_chk )
Check the owner of the crontab directories. Procedure: # ls -ld /var/spool/cron # ls -ld /etc/cron.d /etc/crontab /etc/cron.daily /etc/cron.hourly /etc/cron.monthly /etc/cron.weekly or # ls -ld /etc/cron*\|grep -v deny If the owner of any of the crontab directories is not root or bin, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-31386r1_fix)
Change the mode of the crontab directories. # chown root