RHEL 8 must enable auditing of processes that start prior to the audit daemon.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-230468	RHEL-08-030601	SV-230468r792904_rule		Low

Description
Without the capability to generate audit records, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. If auditing is enabled late in the startup process, the actions of some startup processes may not be audited. Some audit systems also maintain state information only available if auditing is enabled before a given process is created. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The list of audited events is the set of events for which audits are to be generated. This set of events is typically a subset of the list of all events for which the system is capable of generating audit records. DoD has defined the list of events for which RHEL 8 will provide an audit record generation capability as the following: 1) Successful and unsuccessful attempts to access, modify, or delete privileges, security objects, security levels, or categories of information (e.g., classification levels); 2) Access actions, such as successful and unsuccessful logon attempts, privileged activities or other system-level access, starting and ending time for user access to the system, concurrent logons from different workstations, successful and unsuccessful accesses to objects, all program initiations, and all direct access to the information system; 3) All account creations, modifications, disabling, and terminations; and 4) All kernel module load, unload, and restart actions. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000473-GPOS-00218

Description

Without the capability to generate audit records, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. If auditing is enabled late in the startup process, the actions of some startup processes may not be audited. Some audit systems also maintain state information only available if auditing is enabled before a given process is created. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The list of audited events is the set of events for which audits are to be generated. This set of events is typically a subset of the list of all events for which the system is capable of generating audit records. DoD has defined the list of events for which RHEL 8 will provide an audit record generation capability as the following: 1) Successful and unsuccessful attempts to access, modify, or delete privileges, security objects, security levels, or categories of information (e.g., classification levels); 2) Access actions, such as successful and unsuccessful logon attempts, privileged activities or other system-level access, starting and ending time for user access to the system, concurrent logons from different workstations, successful and unsuccessful accesses to objects, all program initiations, and all direct access to the information system; 3) All account creations, modifications, disabling, and terminations; and 4) All kernel module load, unload, and restart actions. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000473-GPOS-00218

STIG	Date
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Security Technical Implementation Guide	2023-12-01

Details

Check Text ( C-33137r792903_chk )
Verify RHEL 8 enables auditing of processes that start prior to the audit daemon with the following commands: $ sudo grub2-editenv list \| grep audit kernelopts=root=/dev/mapper/rhel-root ro crashkernel=auto resume=/dev/mapper/rhel-swap rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet fips=1 audit=1 audit_backlog_limit=8192 boot=UUID=8d171156-cd61-421c-ba41-1c021ac29e82 If the "audit" entry does not equal "1", is missing, or the line is commented out, this is a finding. Check that auditing is enabled by default to persist in kernel updates: $ sudo grep audit /etc/default/grub GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="audit=1" If "audit" is not set to "1", is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

Check Text ( C-33137r792903_chk )

Verify RHEL 8 enables auditing of processes that start prior to the audit daemon with the following commands:

$ sudo grub2-editenv list | grep audit

kernelopts=root=/dev/mapper/rhel-root ro crashkernel=auto resume=/dev/mapper/rhel-swap rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet fips=1 audit=1 audit_backlog_limit=8192 boot=UUID=8d171156-cd61-421c-ba41-1c021ac29e82

If the "audit" entry does not equal "1", is missing, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Check that auditing is enabled by default to persist in kernel updates:

$ sudo grep audit /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="audit=1"

If "audit" is not set to "1", is missing or commented out, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-33112r568151_fix)
Configure RHEL 8 to audit processes that start prior to the audit daemon with the following command: $ sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="audit=1" Add or modify the following line in "/etc/default/grub" to ensure the configuration survives kernel updates: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="audit=1"