All global initialization files' executable search paths must contain only absolute paths.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-11985	GEN001840	SV-37420r1_rule	ECCD-1 ECCD-2	Medium

Description
The executable search path (typically the PATH environment variable) contains a list of directories for the shell to search to find executables. If this path includes the current working directory or other relative paths, executables in these directories may be executed instead of system commands. This variable is formatted as a colon-separated list of directories. If there is an empty entry, such as a leading or trailing colon, or two consecutive colons, this is interpreted as the current working directory. Paths starting with a slash (/) are absolute paths.

Description

The executable search path (typically the PATH environment variable) contains a list of directories for the shell to search to find executables. If this path includes the current working directory or other relative paths, executables in these directories may be executed instead of system commands. This variable is formatted as a colon-separated list of directories. If there is an empty entry, such as a leading or trailing colon, or two consecutive colons, this is interpreted as the current working directory. Paths starting with a slash (/) are absolute paths.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2013-04-10

Details

Check Text ( C-35932r1_chk )
Check the global initialization files' executable search paths. Procedure: # grep PATH /etc/bashrc /etc/csh.cshrc /etc/csh.login /etc/csh.logout /etc/environment /etc/ksh.kshrc /etc/profile /etc/suid_profile /etc/profile.d/* This variable is formatted as a colon-separated list of directories. If there is an empty entry, such as a leading or trailing colon, or two consecutive colons, this is a finding. If an entry begins with a character other than a slash (/) this is a relative path, this is a finding.

Check Text ( C-35932r1_chk )

Check the global initialization files' executable search paths.

Procedure:
# grep PATH /etc/bashrc /etc/csh.cshrc /etc/csh.login /etc/csh.logout /etc/environment /etc/ksh.kshrc /etc/profile /etc/suid_profile /etc/profile.d/*

This variable is formatted as a colon-separated list of directories. If there is an empty entry, such as a leading or trailing colon, or two consecutive colons, this is a finding. If an entry begins with a character other than a slash (/) this is a relative path, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-31187r1_fix)
Edit the global initialization file(s) with PATH variables containing relative paths. Edit the file and remove the relative path from the PATH variable.