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All Interactive User Home Directories Must Be Group-Owned By The Primary Group

An XCCDF Rule

Description

Change the group owner of interactive users home directory to the group found in /etc/passwd. To change the group owner of interactive users home directory, use the following command: 

$ sudo chgrp USER_GROUP /home/USER
This rule ensures every home directory related to an interactive user is group-owned by an interactive user. It also ensures that interactive users are group-owners of one and only one home directory.

warning alert: Warning

Due to OVAL limitation, this rule can report a false negative in a specific situation where two interactive users swap the group-ownership of their respective home directories.

Rationale

If the Group Identifier (GID) of a local interactive users home directory is not the same as the primary GID of the user, this would allow unauthorized access to the users files, and users that share the same group may not be able to access files that they legitimately should.

ID
xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_rule_file_groupownership_home_directories
Severity
Medium
References
Updated



Remediation - Shell Script


awk -F':' '{ if ($3 >= 1000 && $3 != 65534) system("chgrp -f " $4" "$6) }' /etc/passwd

Remediation - Ansible

- name: Get all local users from /etc/passwd
  ansible.builtin.getent:
    database: passwd
    split: ':'
  tags:
  - DISA-STIG-RHEL-09-411070