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MS SQL Server 2014 Database Security Technical Implementation Guide
SRG-APP-000495-DB-000329
SQL Server must generate Trace or Audit records when unsuccessful attempts to modify privileges/permissions via locally-defined security objects occur.
SQL Server must generate Trace or Audit records when unsuccessful attempts to modify privileges/permissions via locally-defined security objects occur. An XCCDF Rule
SQL Server must generate Trace or Audit records when unsuccessful attempts to modify privileges/permissions via locally-defined security objects occur.
Medium Severity
<VulnDiscussion>Failed attempts to change the permissions, privileges, and roles granted to users and roles must be tracked. Without an audit trail, unauthorized attempts to elevate or restrict privileges could go undetected.
In SQL Server, there is no distinction between modification of permissions and granting or dropping them. However, native SQL Server security functionality may be supplemented with application-specific tables and logic, in which case the following actions on these tables and procedures/triggers/functions are also relevant:
UPDATE
EXECUTE
To aid in diagnosis, it is necessary to keep track of failed attempts in addition to the successful ones.
Use of SQL Server Audit is recommended. All features of SQL Server Audit are available in the Enterprise and Developer editions of SQL Server 2014. It is not available at the database level in other editions. For this or legacy reasons, the instance may be using SQL Server Trace for auditing, which remains an acceptable solution for the time being. Note, however, that Microsoft intends to remove most aspects of Trace at some point after SQL Server 2016.
Use of SQL Server Audit's SCHEMA_OBJECT_ACCESS_GROUP causes capture of all accesses, successful and otherwise, to the system views (and all other schema-scoped objects). The [Succeeded] column in the audit output indicates the success or failure of the attempted action. Be aware, however, that it may report True in some cases where one would intuitively expect False. For example, SELECT 1/0 FROM SYS.ALL_OBJECTS will appear in the audit trail as successful, if the user has permission to perform that action, even though it contains an invalid expression. Some other actions that one would consider failures (such as selecting from a table that does not exist) may not appear at all.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>