The root account's executable search path must be the vendor default and must contain only absolute paths.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-776	GEN000940	SV-37360r2_rule	ECCD-1 ECCD-2 ECSC-1	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. Entries 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. Entries starting with a slash (/) are absolute paths.

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2015-06-12

Details

Check Text ( C-36049r3_chk )
To view the root user's PATH, log in as the root user, and execute: # env \| grep PATH 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 starts with a character other than a slash (/), this is a finding. If directories beyond those in the vendor's default root path or locally approved additional directories are present, this is a finding.

Check Text ( C-36049r3_chk )

To view the root user's PATH, log in as the root user, and execute:
# env | grep PATH

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 starts with a character other than a slash (/), this is a finding.

If directories beyond those in the vendor's default root path or locally approved additional directories are present, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-31293r3_fix)
Edit the root user's local initialization files ~/.profile,~/.bashrc (assuming root shell is bash). Change any found PATH variable settings to the vendor's default path for the root user. Remove any empty path entries or references to relative paths.