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XCCDF
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Security Technical Implementation Guide
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An XCCDF Profile
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367 rules organized in 367 groups
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be a vendor-supported release.
High Severity
An operating system release is considered "supported" if the vendor continues to provide security patches for the product. With an unsupported release, it will not be possible to resolve security issues discovered in the system software. Red Hat offers the Extended Update Support (EUS) add-on to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, for a fee, for those customers who wish to standardize on a specific minor release for an extended period. The RHEL 8 minor releases eligible for EUS are 8.1, 8.2, 8.4, 8.6, and 8.8. Each RHEL 8 EUS stream is available for 24 months from the availability of the minor release. RHEL 8.10 will be the final minor release overall. For more details on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle visit https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/. Note: The life-cycle time spans and dates are subject to adjustment.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 vendor packaged system security patches and updates must be installed and up to date.
Medium Severity
Timely patching is critical for maintaining the operational availability, confidentiality, and integrity of information technology (IT) systems. However, failure to keep operating system and application software patched is a common mistake made by IT professionals. New patches are released daily, and it is often difficult for even experienced System Administrators to keep abreast of all the new patches. When new weaknesses in an operating system exist, patches are usually made available by the vendor to resolve the problems. If the most recent security patches and updates are not installed, unauthorized users may take advantage of weaknesses in the unpatched software. The lack of prompt attention to patching could result in a system compromise.
SRG-OS-000033-GPOS-00014
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must implement NIST FIPS-validated cryptography for the following: To provision digital signatures, to generate cryptographic hashes, and to protect data requiring data-at-rest protections in accordance with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, and standards.
High Severity
Use of weak or untested encryption algorithms undermines the purposes of using encryption to protect data. The operating system must implement cryptographic modules adhering to the higher standards approved by the federal government since this provides assurance they have been tested and validated. RHEL 8 utilizes GRUB 2 as the default bootloader. Note that GRUB 2 command-line parameters are defined in the "kernelopts" variable of the /boot/grub2/grubenv file for all kernel boot entries. The command "fips-mode-setup" modifies the "kernelopts" variable, which in turn updates all kernel boot entries. The fips=1 kernel option needs to be added to the kernel command line during system installation so that key generation is done with FIPS-approved algorithms and continuous monitoring tests in place. Users must also ensure the system has plenty of entropy during the installation process by moving the mouse around, or if no mouse is available, ensuring that many keystrokes are typed. The recommended amount of keystrokes is 256 and more. Less than 256 keystrokes may generate a nonunique key. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000033-GPOS-00014, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065, SRG-OS-000396-GPOS-00176, SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187, SRG-OS-000478-GPOS-00223
SRG-OS-000185-GPOS-00079
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local disk partitions must implement cryptographic mechanisms to prevent unauthorized disclosure or modification of all information that requires at rest protection.
High Severity
RHEL 8 systems handling data requiring "data at rest" protections must employ cryptographic mechanisms to prevent unauthorized disclosure and modification of the information at rest. Selection of a cryptographic mechanism is based on the need to protect the integrity of organizational information. The strength of the mechanism is commensurate with the security category and/or classification of the information. Organizations have the flexibility to either encrypt all information on storage devices (i.e., full disk encryption) or encrypt specific data structures (e.g., files, records, or fields). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000185-GPOS-00079, SRG-OS-000404-GPOS-00183, SRG-OS-000405-GPOS-00184
SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display the Standard Mandatory DOD Notice and Consent Banner before granting local or remote access to the system via a ssh logon.
Medium Severity
Display of a standardized and approved use notification before granting access to the operating system ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards, and guidance. System use notifications are required only for access via logon interfaces with human users and are not required when such human interfaces do not exist. The banner must be formatted in accordance with applicable DOD policy. Use the following verbiage for operating systems that can accommodate banners of 1300 characters: "You are accessing a U.S. Government (USG) Information System (IS) that is provided for USG-authorized use only. By using this IS (which includes any device attached to this IS), you consent to the following conditions: -The USG routinely intercepts and monitors communications on this IS for purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, COMSEC monitoring, network operations and defense, personnel misconduct (PM), law enforcement (LE), and counterintelligence (CI) investigations. -At any time, the USG may inspect and seize data stored on this IS. -Communications using, or data stored on, this IS are not private, are subject to routine monitoring, interception, and search, and may be disclosed or used for any USG-authorized purpose. -This IS includes security measures (e.g., authentication and access controls) to protect USG interests--not for your personal benefit or privacy. -Notwithstanding the above, using this IS does not constitute consent to PM, LE or CI investigative searching or monitoring of the content of privileged communications, or work product, related to personal representation or services by attorneys, psychotherapists, or clergy, and their assistants. Such communications and work product are private and confidential. See User Agreement for details." Use the following verbiage for operating systems that have severe limitations on the number of characters that can be displayed in the banner: "I've read & consent to terms in IS user agreem't." Satisfies: SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006, SRG-OS-000228-GPOS-00088
SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display the Standard Mandatory DoD Notice and Consent Banner before granting local or remote access to the system via a graphical user logon.
Medium Severity
Display of a standardized and approved use notification before granting access to the operating system ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards, and guidance. System use notifications are required only for access via logon interfaces with human users and are not required when such human interfaces do not exist. The banner must be formatted in accordance with applicable DoD policy. Use the following verbiage for operating systems that can accommodate banners of 1300 characters: "You are accessing a U.S. Government (USG) Information System (IS) that is provided for USG-authorized use only. By using this IS (which includes any device attached to this IS), you consent to the following conditions: -The USG routinely intercepts and monitors communications on this IS for purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, COMSEC monitoring, network operations and defense, personnel misconduct (PM), law enforcement (LE), and counterintelligence (CI) investigations. -At any time, the USG may inspect and seize data stored on this IS. -Communications using, or data stored on, this IS are not private, are subject to routine monitoring, interception, and search, and may be disclosed or used for any USG-authorized purpose. -This IS includes security measures (e.g., authentication and access controls) to protect USG interests--not for your personal benefit or privacy. -Notwithstanding the above, using this IS does not constitute consent to PM, LE or CI investigative searching or monitoring of the content of privileged communications, or work product, related to personal representation or services by attorneys, psychotherapists, or clergy, and their assistants. Such communications and work product are private and confidential. See User Agreement for details." Satisfies: SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006, SRG-OS-000228-GPOS-00088
SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display the Standard Mandatory DoD Notice and Consent Banner before granting local or remote access to the system via a command line user logon.
Medium Severity
Display of a standardized and approved use notification before granting access to the operating system ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards, and guidance. System use notifications are required only for access via logon interfaces with human users and are not required when such human interfaces do not exist. The banner must be formatted in accordance with applicable DoD policy. Use the following verbiage for operating systems that can accommodate banners of 1300 characters: "You are accessing a U.S. Government (USG) Information System (IS) that is provided for USG-authorized use only. By using this IS (which includes any device attached to this IS), you consent to the following conditions: -The USG routinely intercepts and monitors communications on this IS for purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, COMSEC monitoring, network operations and defense, personnel misconduct (PM), law enforcement (LE), and counterintelligence (CI) investigations. -At any time, the USG may inspect and seize data stored on this IS. -Communications using, or data stored on, this IS are not private, are subject to routine monitoring, interception, and search, and may be disclosed or used for any USG-authorized purpose. -This IS includes security measures (e.g., authentication and access controls) to protect USG interests--not for your personal benefit or privacy. -Notwithstanding the above, using this IS does not constitute consent to PM, LE or CI investigative searching or monitoring of the content of privileged communications, or work product, related to personal representation or services by attorneys, psychotherapists, or clergy, and their assistants. Such communications and work product are private and confidential. See User Agreement for details." Satisfies: SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006, SRG-OS-000228-GPOS-00088
SRG-OS-000032-GPOS-00013
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 remote access methods must be monitored.
Medium Severity
Remote access services, such as those providing remote access to network devices and information systems, which lack automated monitoring capabilities, increase risk and make remote user access management difficult at best. Remote access is access to DOD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, nonorganization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Automated monitoring of remote access sessions allows organizations to detect cyber attacks and ensure ongoing compliance with remote access policies by auditing connection activities of remote access capabilities, such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), on a variety of information system components (e.g., servers, workstations, notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets).
SRG-OS-000066-GPOS-00034
1 Rule
RHEL 8, for PKI-based authentication, must validate certificates by constructing a certification path (which includes status information) to an accepted trust anchor.
Medium Severity
Without path validation, an informed trust decision by the relying party cannot be made when presented with any certificate not already explicitly trusted. A trust anchor is an authoritative entity represented via a public key and associated data. It is used in the context of public key infrastructures, X.509 digital certificates, and DNSSEC. When there is a chain of trust, usually the top entity to be trusted becomes the trust anchor; it can be, for example, a Certification Authority (CA). A certification path starts with the subject certificate and proceeds through a number of intermediate certificates up to a trusted root certificate, typically issued by a trusted CA. This requirement verifies that a certification path to an accepted trust anchor is used for certificate validation and that the path includes status information. Path validation is necessary for a relying party to make an informed trust decision when presented with any certificate not already explicitly trusted. Status information for certification paths includes certificate revocation lists or online certificate status protocol responses. Validation of the certificate status information is out of scope for this requirement. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000066-GPOS-00034, SRG-OS-000384-GPOS-00167
SRG-OS-000067-GPOS-00035
1 Rule
RHEL 8, for certificate-based authentication, must enforce authorized access to the corresponding private key.
Medium Severity
If an unauthorized user obtains access to a private key without a passcode, that user would have unauthorized access to any system where the associated public key has been installed.
SRG-OS-000073-GPOS-00041
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must encrypt all stored passwords with a FIPS 140-2 approved cryptographic hashing algorithm.
Medium Severity
Passwords need to be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If passwords are not encrypted, they can be plainly read (i.e., clear text) and easily compromised. Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements.
SRG-OS-000073-GPOS-00041
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must employ FIPS 140-2 approved cryptographic hashing algorithms for all stored passwords.
Medium Severity
The system must use a strong hashing algorithm to store the password. Passwords need to be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If passwords are not encrypted, they can be plainly read (i.e., clear text) and easily compromised.
SRG-OS-000073-GPOS-00041
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 shadow password suite must be configured to use a sufficient number of hashing rounds.
Medium Severity
The system must use a strong hashing algorithm to store the password. The system must use a sufficient number of hashing rounds to ensure the required level of entropy. Passwords need to be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If passwords are not encrypted, they can be plainly read (i.e., clear text) and easily compromised.
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems booted with United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) must require authentication upon booting into single-user mode and maintenance.
High Severity
If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu.
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems booted with a BIOS must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.
High Severity
If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu.
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems must require authentication upon booting into rescue mode.
Medium Severity
If the system does not require valid root authentication before it boots into emergency or rescue mode, anyone who invokes emergency or rescue mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system.
SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 pam_unix.so module must be configured in the password-auth file to use a FIPS 140-2 approved cryptographic hashing algorithm for system authentication.
Medium Severity
Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. RHEL 8 systems utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.
SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent system daemons from using Kerberos for authentication.
Medium Severity
Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. RHEL 8 systems utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. The key derivation function (KDF) in Kerberos is not FIPS compatible. Ensuring the system does not have any keytab files present prevents system daemons from using Kerberos for authentication. A keytab is a file containing pairs of Kerberos principals and encrypted keys. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.
SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061
1 Rule
The krb5-workstation package must not be installed on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. RHEL 8 systems utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. Currently, Kerberos does not utilize FIPS 140-2 cryptography. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.
SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use a Linux Security Module configured to enforce limits on system services.
Medium Severity
Without verification of the security functions, security functions may not operate correctly and the failure may go unnoticed. Security function is defined as the hardware, software, and/or firmware of the information system responsible for enforcing the system security policy and supporting the isolation of code and data on which the protection is based. Security functionality includes, but is not limited to, establishing system accounts, configuring access authorizations (i.e., permissions, privileges), setting events to be audited, and setting intrusion detection parameters. This requirement applies to operating systems performing security function verification/testing and/or systems and environments that require this functionality.
SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have policycoreutils package installed.
Low Severity
Without verification of the security functions, security functions may not operate correctly and the failure may go unnoticed. Security function is defined as the hardware, software, and/or firmware of the information system responsible for enforcing the system security policy and supporting the isolation of code and data on which the protection is based. Security functionality includes, but is not limited to, establishing system accounts, configuring access authorizations (i.e., permissions, privileges), setting events to be audited, and setting intrusion detection parameters. Policycoreutils contains the policy core utilities that are required for basic operation of an SELinux-enabled system. These utilities include load_policy to load SELinux policies, setfile to label filesystems, newrole to switch roles, and run_init to run /etc/init.d scripts in the proper context.
SRG-OS-000138-GPOS-00069
1 Rule
A sticky bit must be set on all RHEL 8 public directories to prevent unauthorized and unintended information transferred via shared system resources.
Medium Severity
Preventing unauthorized information transfers mitigates the risk of information, including encrypted representations of information, produced by the actions of prior users/roles (or the actions of processes acting on behalf of prior users/roles) from being available to any current users/roles (or current processes) that obtain access to shared system resources (e.g., registers, main memory, hard disks) after those resources have been released back to information systems. The control of information in shared resources is also commonly referred to as object reuse and residual information protection. This requirement generally applies to the design of an information technology product, but it can also apply to the configuration of particular information system components that are, or use, such products. This can be verified by acceptance/validation processes in DoD or other government agencies. There may be shared resources with configurable protections (e.g., files in storage) that may be assessed on specific information system components.
SRG-OS-000163-GPOS-00072
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive.
Medium Severity
Terminating an unresponsive SSH session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended. In addition, quickly terminating an idle SSH session will also free up resources committed by the managed network element. Terminating network connections associated with communications sessions includes, for example, deallocating associated TCP/IP address/port pairs at the operating system level and deallocating networking assignments at the application level if multiple application sessions are using a single operating system-level network connection. This does not mean the operating system terminates all sessions or network access; it only ends the unresponsive session and releases the resources associated with that session. RHEL 8 uses /etc/ssh/sshd_config for configurations of OpenSSH. Within the sshd_config, the product of the values of "ClientAliveInterval" and "ClientAliveCountMax" is used to establish the inactivity threshold. The "ClientAliveInterval" is a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. The "ClientAliveCountMax" is the number of client alive messages that may be sent without sshd receiving any messages back from the client. If this threshold is met, sshd will disconnect the client. For more information on these settings and others, refer to the sshd_config man pages. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000163-GPOS-00072, SRG-OS-000126-GPOS-00066, SRG-OS-000279-GPOS-00109
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log/messages file must have mode 0640 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log/messages file must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log/messages file must be group-owned by root.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log directory must have mode 0755 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log directory must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 /var/log directory must be group-owned by root.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements.
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH server must be configured to use only Message Authentication Codes (MACs) employing FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic hash algorithms.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Remote access (e.g., RDP) is access to DOD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, nonorganization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. RHEL 8 incorporates systemwide crypto policies by default. The SSH configuration file has no effect on the ciphers, MACs, or algorithms unless specifically defined in the /etc/sysconfig/sshd file. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/opensshserver.config file. The system will attempt to use the first hash presented by the client that matches the server list. Listing the values "strongest to weakest" is a method to ensure the use of the strongest hash available to secure the SSH connection. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000393-GPOS-00173, SRG-OS-000394-GPOS-00174, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must implement DOD-approved encryption to protect the confidentiality of SSH server connections.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Remote access (e.g., RDP) is access to DOD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, nonorganization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. RHEL 8 incorporates systemwide crypto policies by default. The SSH configuration file has no effect on the ciphers, MACs, or algorithms unless specifically defined in the /etc/sysconfig/sshd file. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/opensshserver.config file. The system will attempt to use the first hash presented by the client that matches the server list. Listing the values "strongest to weakest" is a method to ensure the use of the strongest hash available to secure the SSH connection. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000393-GPOS-00173, SRG-OS-000394-GPOS-00174, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure the SSH server uses strong entropy.
Low Severity
The most important characteristic of a random number generator is its randomness, namely its ability to deliver random numbers that are impossible to predict. Entropy in computer security is associated with the unpredictability of a source of randomness. The random source with high entropy tends to achieve a uniform distribution of random values. Random number generators are one of the most important building blocks of cryptosystems. The SSH implementation in RHEL 8 uses the OPENSSL library, which does not use high-entropy sources by default. By using the SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG environment variable the OPENSSL random generator is reseeded from /dev/random. This setting is not recommended on computers without the hardware random generator because insufficient entropy causes the connection to be blocked until enough entropy is available.
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must implement DoD-approved encryption in the OpenSSL package.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Remote access (e.g., RDP) is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. RHEL 8 incorporates system-wide crypto policies by default. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/openssl.config file. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000393-GPOS-00173, SRG-OS-000394-GPOS-00174, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must implement DoD-approved TLS encryption in the OpenSSL package.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Remote access (e.g., RDP) is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. RHEL 8 incorporates system-wide crypto policies by default. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/openssl.config file. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000393-GPOS-00173, SRG-OS-000394-GPOS-00174, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must implement DoD-approved TLS encryption in the GnuTLS package.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption is a required security setting as a number of known vulnerabilities have been reported against Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and earlier versions of TLS. Encryption of private information is essential to ensuring data confidentiality. If private information is not encrypted, it can be intercepted and easily read by an unauthorized party. SQL Server must use a minimum of FIPS 140-2-approved TLS version 1.2, and all non-FIPS-approved SSL and TLS versions must be disabled. NIST SP 800-52 specifies the preferred configurations for government systems. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. The GnuTLS library offers an API to access secure communications protocols. SSLv2 is not available in the GnuTLS library. The RHEL 8 system-wide crypto policy defines employed algorithms in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/gnutls.config file. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 system commands must have mode 755 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 system commands must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 system commands must be group-owned by root or a system account.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library files must have mode 755 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library files must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library files must be group-owned by root or a system account.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000363-GPOS-00150
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 file integrity tool must notify the system administrator when changes to the baseline configuration or anomalies in the operation of any security functions are discovered within an organizationally defined frequency.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized changes to the baseline configuration could make the system vulnerable to various attacks or allow unauthorized access to the operating system. Changes to operating system configurations can have unintended side effects, some of which may be relevant to security. Detecting such changes and providing an automated response can help avoid unintended, negative consequences that could ultimately affect the security state of the operating system. The operating system's Information System Security Manager (ISSM)/Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and System Administrators (SAs) must be notified via email and/or monitoring system trap when there is an unauthorized modification of a configuration item. Notifications provided by information systems include messages to local computer consoles, and/or hardware indications, such as lights. This capability must take into account operational requirements for availability for selecting an appropriate response. The organization may choose to shut down or restart the information system upon security function anomaly detection. RHEL 8 comes with many optional software packages. A file integrity tool called Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment (AIDE) is one of those optional packages. This requirement assumes the use of AIDE; however, a different tool may be used if the requirements are met. Note that AIDE does not have a configuration that will send a notification, so a cron job is recommended that uses the mail application on the system to email the results of the file integrity check. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000363-GPOS-00150, SRG-OS-000446-GPOS-00200, SRG-OS-000447-GPOS-00201
SRG-OS-000366-GPOS-00153
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent the installation of software, patches, service packs, device drivers, or operating system components from a repository without verification they have been digitally signed using a certificate that is issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) that is recognized and approved by the organization.
High Severity
Changes to any software components can have significant effects on the overall security of the operating system. This requirement ensures the software has not been tampered with and that it has been provided by a trusted vendor. Accordingly, patches, service packs, device drivers, or operating system components must be signed with a certificate recognized and approved by the organization. Verifying the authenticity of the software prior to installation validates the integrity of the patch or upgrade received from a vendor. This verifies the software has not been tampered with and that it has been provided by a trusted vendor. Self-signed certificates are disallowed by this requirement. The operating system should not have to verify the software again. This requirement does not mandate DoD certificates for this purpose; however, the certificate used to verify the software must be from an approved CA.
SRG-OS-000366-GPOS-00153
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent the installation of software, patches, service packs, device drivers, or operating system components of local packages without verification they have been digitally signed using a certificate that is issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) that is recognized and approved by the organization.
High Severity
Changes to any software components can have significant effects on the overall security of the operating system. This requirement ensures the software has not been tampered with and that it has been provided by a trusted vendor. Accordingly, patches, service packs, device drivers, or operating system components must be signed with a certificate recognized and approved by the organization. Verifying the authenticity of the software prior to installation validates the integrity of the patch or upgrade received from a vendor. This verifies the software has not been tampered with and that it has been provided by a trusted vendor. Self-signed certificates are disallowed by this requirement. The operating system should not have to verify the software again. This requirement does not mandate DoD certificates for this purpose; however, the certificate used to verify the software must be from an approved CA.
SRG-OS-000366-GPOS-00153
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent the loading of a new kernel for later execution.
Medium Severity
Changes to any software components can have significant effects on the overall security of the operating system. This requirement ensures the software has not been tampered with and that it has been provided by a trusted vendor. Disabling kexec_load prevents an unsigned kernel image (that could be a windows kernel or modified vulnerable kernel) from being loaded. Kexec can be used subvert the entire secureboot process and should be avoided at all costs especially since it can load unsigned kernel images. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00122
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable kernel parameters to enforce discretionary access control on symlinks.
Medium Severity
Discretionary Access Control (DAC) is based on the notion that individual users are "owners" of objects and therefore have discretion over who should be authorized to access the object and in which mode (e.g., read or write). Ownership is usually acquired as a consequence of creating the object or via specified ownership assignment. DAC allows the owner to determine who will have access to objects they control. An example of DAC includes user-controlled file permissions. When discretionary access control policies are implemented, subjects are not constrained with regard to what actions they can take with information for which they have already been granted access. Thus, subjects that have been granted access to information are not prevented from passing (i.e., the subjects have the discretion to pass) the information to other subjects or objects. A subject that is constrained in its operation by Mandatory Access Control policies is still able to operate under the less rigorous constraints of this requirement. Thus, while Mandatory Access Control imposes constraints preventing a subject from passing information to another subject operating at a different sensitivity level, this requirement permits the subject to pass the information to any subject at the same sensitivity level. The policy is bounded by the information system boundary. Once the information is passed outside the control of the information system, additional means may be required to ensure the constraints remain in effect. While the older, more traditional definitions of discretionary access control require identity-based access control, that limitation is not required for this use of discretionary access control. By enabling the fs.protected_symlinks kernel parameter, symbolic links are permitted to be followed only when outside a sticky world-writable directory, or when the UID of the link and follower match, or when the directory owner matches the symlink's owner. Disallowing such symlinks helps mitigate vulnerabilities based on insecure file system accessed by privileged programs, avoiding an exploitation vector exploiting unsafe use of open() or creat(). The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf Satisfies: SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00122, SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00123, SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00124, SRG-OS-000324-GPOS-00125
SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00122
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable kernel parameters to enforce discretionary access control on hardlinks.
Medium Severity
Discretionary Access Control (DAC) is based on the notion that individual users are "owners" of objects and therefore have discretion over who should be authorized to access the object and in which mode (e.g., read or write). Ownership is usually acquired as a consequence of creating the object or via specified ownership assignment. DAC allows the owner to determine who will have access to objects they control. An example of DAC includes user-controlled file permissions. When discretionary access control policies are implemented, subjects are not constrained with regard to what actions they can take with information for which they have already been granted access. Thus, subjects that have been granted access to information are not prevented from passing (i.e., the subjects have the discretion to pass) the information to other subjects or objects. A subject that is constrained in its operation by Mandatory Access Control policies is still able to operate under the less rigorous constraints of this requirement. Thus, while Mandatory Access Control imposes constraints preventing a subject from passing information to another subject operating at a different sensitivity level, this requirement permits the subject to pass the information to any subject at the same sensitivity level. The policy is bounded by the information system boundary. Once the information is passed outside the control of the information system, additional means may be required to ensure the constraints remain in effect. While the older, more traditional definitions of discretionary access control require identity-based access control, that limitation is not required for this use of discretionary access control. By enabling the fs.protected_hardlinks kernel parameter, users can no longer create soft or hard links to files they do not own. Disallowing such hardlinks mitigate vulnerabilities based on insecure file system accessed by privileged programs, avoiding an exploitation vector exploiting unsafe use of open() or creat(). The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf Satisfies: SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00122, SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00123, SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00124, SRG-OS-000324-GPOS-00125
SRG-OS-000138-GPOS-00069
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must restrict access to the kernel message buffer.
Low Severity
Preventing unauthorized information transfers mitigates the risk of information, including encrypted representations of information, produced by the actions of prior users/roles (or the actions of processes acting on behalf of prior users/roles) from being available to any current users/roles (or current processes) that obtain access to shared system resources (e.g., registers, main memory, hard disks) after those resources have been released back to information systems. The control of information in shared resources is also commonly referred to as object reuse and residual information protection. This requirement generally applies to the design of an information technology product, but it can also apply to the configuration of particular information system components that are, or use, such products. This can be verified by acceptance/validation processes in DoD or other government agencies. There may be shared resources with configurable protections (e.g., files in storage) that may be assessed on specific information system components. Restricting access to the kernel message buffer limits access to only root. This prevents attackers from gaining additional system information as a non-privileged user. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000138-GPOS-00069
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent kernel profiling by unprivileged users.
Low Severity
Preventing unauthorized information transfers mitigates the risk of information, including encrypted representations of information, produced by the actions of prior users/roles (or the actions of processes acting on behalf of prior users/roles) from being available to any current users/roles (or current processes) that obtain access to shared system resources (e.g., registers, main memory, hard disks) after those resources have been released back to information systems. The control of information in shared resources is also commonly referred to as object reuse and residual information protection. This requirement generally applies to the design of an information technology product, but it can also apply to the configuration of particular information system components that are, or use, such products. This can be verified by acceptance/validation processes in DoD or other government agencies. There may be shared resources with configurable protections (e.g., files in storage) that may be assessed on specific information system components. Setting the kernel.perf_event_paranoid kernel parameter to "2" prevents attackers from gaining additional system information as a non-privileged user. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require users to provide a password for privilege escalation.
Medium Severity
Without reauthentication, users may access resources or perform tasks for which they do not have authorization. When operating systems provide the capability to escalate a functional capability, it is critical the user reauthenticate. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00157, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00158
SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require users to reauthenticate for privilege escalation.
Medium Severity
Without reauthentication, users may access resources or perform tasks for which they do not have authorization. When operating systems provide the capability to escalate a functional capability, it is critical the user reauthenticate. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00157, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00158
SRG-OS-000375-GPOS-00160
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have the packages required for multifactor authentication installed.
Medium Severity
Using an authentication device, such as a DoD Common Access Card (CAC) or token that is separate from the information system, ensures that even if the information system is compromised, credentials stored on the authentication device will not be affected. Multifactor solutions that require devices separate from information systems gaining access include, for example, hardware tokens providing time-based or challenge-response authenticators and smart cards such as the U.S. Government Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card and the DoD CAC. A privileged account is defined as an information system account with authorizations of a privileged user. Remote access is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. This requirement only applies to components where this is specific to the function of the device or has the concept of an organizational user (e.g., VPN, proxy capability). This does not apply to authentication for the purpose of configuring the device itself (management).
SRG-OS-000375-GPOS-00160
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must implement certificate status checking for multifactor authentication.
Medium Severity
Using an authentication device, such as a DoD Common Access Card (CAC) or token that is separate from the information system, ensures that even if the information system is compromised, credentials stored on the authentication device will not be affected. Multifactor solutions that require devices separate from information systems gaining access include, for example, hardware tokens providing time-based or challenge-response authenticators and smart cards such as the U.S. Government Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card and the DoD CAC. RHEL 8 includes multiple options for configuring certificate status checking, but for this requirement focuses on the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD). By default, sssd performs Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) checking and certificate verification using a sha256 digest function. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000375-GPOS-00160, SRG-OS-000377-GPOS-00162
SRG-OS-000376-GPOS-00161
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must accept Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials.
Medium Severity
The use of PIV credentials facilitates standardization and reduces the risk of unauthorized access. The DoD has mandated the use of the Common Access Card (CAC) to support identity management and personal authentication for systems covered under Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12, as well as making the CAC a primary component of layered protection for national security systems.
SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00192
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must implement non-executable data to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.
Medium Severity
Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in non-executable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can be either hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Examples of attacks are buffer overflow attacks.
SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must clear the page allocator to prevent use-after-free attacks.
Medium Severity
Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in non-executable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can be either hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Poisoning writes an arbitrary value to freed pages, so any modification or reference to that page after being freed or before being initialized will be detected and prevented. This prevents many types of use-after-free vulnerabilities at little performance cost. Also prevents leak of data and detection of corrupted memory. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068, SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00192
SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable virtual syscalls.
Medium Severity
Syscalls are special routines in the Linux kernel, which userspace applications ask to do privileged tasks. Invoking a system call is an expensive operation because the processor must interrupt the currently executing task and switch context to kernel mode and then back to userspace after the system call completes. Virtual Syscalls map into user space a page that contains some variables and the implementation of some system calls. This allows the system calls to be executed in userspace to alleviate the context switching expense. Virtual Syscalls provide an opportunity of attack for a user who has control of the return instruction pointer. Disabling vsyscalls help to prevent return oriented programming (ROP) attacks via buffer overflows and overruns. If the system intends to run containers based on RHEL 6 components, then virtual syscalls will need enabled so the components function properly. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068, SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00192
SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must clear SLUB/SLAB objects to prevent use-after-free attacks.
Medium Severity
Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in nonexecutable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can be either hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Poisoning writes an arbitrary value to freed pages, so any modification or reference to that page after being freed or before being initialized will be detected and prevented. This prevents many types of use-after-free vulnerabilities at little performance cost. Also prevents leak of data and detection of corrupted memory. SLAB objects are blocks of physically-contiguous memory. SLUB is the unqueued SLAB allocator. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000134-GPOS-00068, SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00192
SRG-OS-000433-GPOS-00193
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must implement address space layout randomization (ASLR) to protect its memory from unauthorized code execution.
Medium Severity
Some adversaries launch attacks with the intent of executing code in non-executable regions of memory or in memory locations that are prohibited. Security safeguards employed to protect memory include, for example, data execution prevention and address space layout randomization. Data execution prevention safeguards can be either hardware-enforced or software-enforced with hardware providing the greater strength of mechanism. Examples of attacks are buffer overflow attacks. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000437-GPOS-00194
1 Rule
YUM must remove all software components after updated versions have been installed on RHEL 8.
Low Severity
Previous versions of software components that are not removed from the information system after updates have been installed may be exploited by adversaries. Some information technology products may remove older versions of software automatically from the information system.
SRG-OS-000445-GPOS-00199
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable the SELinux targeted policy.
Medium Severity
Without verification of the security functions, security functions may not operate correctly and the failure may go unnoticed. Security function is defined as the hardware, software, and/or firmware of the information system responsible for enforcing the system security policy and supporting the isolation of code and data on which the protection is based. Security functionality includes, but is not limited to, establishing system accounts, configuring access authorizations (i.e., permissions, privileges), setting events to be audited, and setting intrusion detection parameters. This requirement applies to operating systems performing security function verification/testing and/or systems and environments that require this functionality.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
There must be no shosts.equiv files on the RHEL 8 operating system.
High Severity
The "shosts.equiv" files are used to configure host-based authentication for the system via SSH. Host-based authentication is not sufficient for preventing unauthorized access to the system, as it does not require interactive identification and authentication of a connection request, or for the use of two-factor authentication.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
There must be no .shosts files on the RHEL 8 operating system.
High Severity
The ".shosts" files are used to configure host-based authentication for individual users or the system via SSH. Host-based authentication is not sufficient for preventing unauthorized access to the system, as it does not require interactive identification and authentication of a connection request, or for the use of two-factor authentication.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable the hardware random number generator entropy gatherer service.
Low Severity
The most important characteristic of a random number generator is its randomness, namely its ability to deliver random numbers that are impossible to predict. Entropy in computer security is associated with the unpredictability of a source of randomness. The random source with high entropy tends to achieve a uniform distribution of random values. Random number generators are one of the most important building blocks of cryptosystems. The rngd service feeds random data from hardware device to kernel random device. Quality (nonpredictable) random number generation is important for several security functions (i.e., ciphers).
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH public host key files must have mode 0644 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
If a public host key file is modified by an unauthorized user, the SSH service may be compromised.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH private host key files must have mode 0640 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
If an unauthorized user obtains the private SSH host key file, the host could be impersonated.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must perform strict mode checking of home directory configuration files.
Medium Severity
If other users have access to modify user-specific SSH configuration files, they may be able to log on to the system as another user.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must not allow authentication using known host’s authentication.
Medium Severity
Configuring this setting for the SSH daemon provides additional assurance that remote logon via SSH will require a password, even in the event of misconfiguration elsewhere.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must not allow Kerberos authentication, except to fulfill documented and validated mission requirements.
Medium Severity
Configuring these settings for the SSH daemon provides additional assurance that remote logon via SSH will not use unused methods of authentication, even in the event of misconfiguration elsewhere.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use a separate file system for /var.
Low Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use a separate file system for /var/log.
Low Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use a separate file system for the system audit data path.
Low Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
A separate RHEL 8 filesystem must be used for the /tmp directory.
Medium Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000109-GPOS-00056
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not permit direct logons to the root account using remote access via SSH.
Medium Severity
Even though the communications channel may be encrypted, an additional layer of security is gained by extending the policy of not logging on directly as root. In addition, logging on with a user-specific account provides individual accountability of actions performed on the system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The rsyslog service must be running in RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
Configuring RHEL 8 to implement organization-wide security implementation guides and security checklists ensures compliance with federal standards and establishes a common security baseline across the DoD that reflects the most restrictive security posture consistent with operational requirements. Configuration settings are the set of parameters that can be changed in hardware, software, or firmware components of the system that affect the security posture and/or functionality of the system. Security-related parameters are those parameters impacting the security state of the system, including the parameters required to satisfy other security control requirements. Security-related parameters include, for example: registry settings; account, file, directory permission settings; and settings for functions, ports, protocols, services, and remote connections.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent files with the setuid and setgid bit set from being executed on file systems that contain user home directories.
Medium Severity
The "nosuid" mount option causes the system not to execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent files with the setuid and setgid bit set from being executed on the /boot directory.
Medium Severity
The "nosuid" mount option causes the system not to execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent special devices on non-root local partitions.
Medium Severity
The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The only legitimate location for device files is the /dev directory located on the root partition.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent code from being executed on file systems that contain user home directories.
Medium Severity
The "noexec" mount option causes the system not to execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent special devices on file systems that are used with removable media.
Medium Severity
The "nodev" mount option causes the system not to interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent code from being executed on file systems that are used with removable media.
Medium Severity
The "noexec" mount option causes the system not to execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent files with the setuid and setgid bit set from being executed on file systems that are used with removable media.
Medium Severity
The "nosuid" mount option causes the system not to execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent code from being executed on file systems that are imported via Network File System (NFS).
Medium Severity
The "noexec" mount option causes the system not to execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent special devices on file systems that are imported via Network File System (NFS).
Medium Severity
The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent files with the setuid and setgid bit set from being executed on file systems that are imported via Network File System (NFS).
Medium Severity
The "nosuid" mount option causes the system not to execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
Local RHEL 8 initialization files must not execute world-writable programs.
Medium Severity
If user start-up files execute world-writable programs, especially in unprotected directories, they could be maliciously modified to destroy user files or otherwise compromise the system at the user level. If the system is compromised at the user level, it is easier to elevate privileges to eventually compromise the system at the root and network level.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable kernel dumps unless needed.
Medium Severity
Kernel core dumps may contain the full contents of system memory at the time of the crash. Kernel core dumps may consume a considerable amount of disk space and may result in denial of service by exhausting the available space on the target file system partition. RHEL 8 installation media presents the option to enable or disable the kdump service at the time of system installation.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the kernel.core_pattern.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable acquiring, saving, and processing core dumps.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. A core dump includes a memory image taken at the time the operating system terminates an application. The memory image could contain sensitive data and is generally useful only for developers trying to debug problems. When the kernel invokes systemd-coredumpt to handle a core dump, it runs in privileged mode, and will connect to the socket created by the systemd-coredump.socket unit. This, in turn, will spawn an unprivileged systemd-coredump@.service instance to process the core dump.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable core dumps for all users.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. A core dump includes a memory image taken at the time the operating system terminates an application. The memory image could contain sensitive data and is generally useful only for developers trying to debug problems.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable storing core dumps.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. A core dump includes a memory image taken at the time the operating system terminates an application. The memory image could contain sensitive data and is generally useful only for developers trying to debug problems.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable core dump backtraces.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. A core dump includes a memory image taken at the time the operating system terminates an application. The memory image could contain sensitive data and is generally useful only for developers trying to debug problems.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
For RHEL 8 systems using Domain Name Servers (DNS) resolution, at least two name servers must be configured.
Medium Severity
To provide availability for name resolution services, multiple redundant name servers are mandated. A failure in name resolution could lead to the failure of security functions requiring name resolution, which may include time synchronization, centralized authentication, and remote system logging.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
Executable search paths within the initialization files of all local interactive RHEL 8 users must only contain paths that resolve to the system default or the users home directory.
Medium Severity
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 (other than the user's home directory), 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. If deviations from the default system search path for the local interactive user are required, they must be documented with the Information System Security Officer (ISSO).
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 world-writable directories must be owned by root, sys, bin, or an application user.
Medium Severity
If a world-writable directory is not owned by root, sys, bin, or an application User Identifier (UID), unauthorized users may be able to modify files created by others. The only authorized public directories are those temporary directories supplied with the system or those designed to be temporary file repositories. The setting is normally reserved for directories used by the system and by users for temporary file storage, (e.g., /tmp), and for directories requiring global read/write access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 world-writable directories must be group-owned by root, sys, bin, or an application group.
Medium Severity
If a world-writable directory is not group-owned by root, sys, bin, or an application Group Identifier (GID), unauthorized users may be able to modify files created by others. The only authorized public directories are those temporary directories supplied with the system or those designed to be temporary file repositories. The setting is normally reserved for directories used by the system and by users for temporary file storage, (e.g., /tmp), and for directories requiring global read/write access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive users must have a home directory assigned in the /etc/passwd file.
Medium Severity
If local interactive users are not assigned a valid home directory, there is no place for the storage and control of files they should own.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive user home directories must have mode 0750 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Excessive permissions on local interactive user home directories may allow unauthorized access to user files by other users.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive user home directories must be group-owned by the home directory owner’s primary group.
Medium Severity
If the Group Identifier (GID) of a local interactive user’s home directory is not the same as the primary GID of the user, this would allow unauthorized access to the user’s files, and users that share the same group may not be able to access files that they legitimately should.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive user home directories defined in the /etc/passwd file must exist.
Medium Severity
If a local interactive user has a home directory defined that does not exist, the user may be given access to the "/" directory as the current working directory upon logon. This could create a denial of service because the user would not be able to access their logon configuration files, and it may give them visibility to system files they normally would not be able to access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive user accounts must be assigned a home directory upon creation.
Medium Severity
If local interactive users are not assigned a valid home directory, there is no place for the storage and control of files they should own.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local initialization files must have mode 0740 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Local initialization files are used to configure the user's shell environment upon logon. Malicious modification of these files could compromise accounts upon logon.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local files and directories must have a valid owner.
Medium Severity
Unowned files and directories may be unintentionally inherited if a user is assigned the same User Identifier "UID" as the UID of the un-owned files.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local files and directories must have a valid group owner.
Medium Severity
Files without a valid group owner may be unintentionally inherited if a group is assigned the same Group Identifier (GID) as the GID of the files without a valid group owner.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
A separate RHEL 8 filesystem must be used for user home directories (such as /home or an equivalent).
Medium Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00229
1 Rule
Unattended or automatic logon via the RHEL 8 graphical user interface must not be allowed.
High Severity
Failure to restrict system access to authenticated users negatively impacts operating system security.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00229
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not allow users to override SSH environment variables.
Medium Severity
SSH environment options potentially allow users to bypass access restriction in some configurations.
SRG-OS-000002-GPOS-00002
1 Rule
RHEL 8 temporary user accounts must be provisioned with an expiration time of 72 hours or less.
Medium Severity
If temporary user accounts remain active when no longer needed or for an excessive period, these accounts may be used to gain unauthorized access. To mitigate this risk, automated termination of all temporary accounts must be set upon account creation. Temporary accounts are established as part of normal account activation procedures when there is a need for short-term accounts without the demand for immediacy in account activation. If temporary accounts are used, RHEL 8 must be configured to automatically terminate these types of accounts after a DoD-defined time period of 72 hours. To address access requirements, many RHEL 8 operating systems may be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements.
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure account lockouts persist.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure account lockouts persist.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent system messages from being presented when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent system messages from being presented when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must log user name information when unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must log user name information when unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must include root when automatically locking an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. RHEL 8 can utilize the "pam_faillock.so" for this purpose. Note that manual changes to the listed files may be overwritten by the "authselect" program. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must include root when automatically locking an account until the locked account is released by an administrator when three unsuccessful logon attempts occur during a 15-minute time period.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000027-GPOS-00008
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must limit the number of concurrent sessions to ten for all accounts and/or account types.
Low Severity
Operating system management includes the ability to control the number of users and user sessions that utilize an operating system. Limiting the number of allowed users and sessions per user is helpful in reducing the risks related to DoS attacks. This requirement addresses concurrent sessions for information system accounts and does not address concurrent sessions by single users via multiple system accounts. The maximum number of concurrent sessions should be defined based on mission needs and the operational environment for each system.
SRG-OS-000028-GPOS-00009
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable a user session lock until that user re-establishes access using established identification and authentication procedures for graphical user sessions.
Medium Severity
A session lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not want to log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined. Regardless of where the session lock is determined and implemented, once invoked, the session lock must remain in place until the user reauthenticates. No other activity aside from reauthentication must unlock the system. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000028-GPOS-00009, SRG-OS-000030-GPOS-00011
SRG-OS-000028-GPOS-00009
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be able to initiate directly a session lock for all connection types using smartcard when the smartcard is removed.
Medium Severity
A session lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not want to log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined. Rather than be forced to wait for a period of time to expire before the user session can be locked, RHEL 8 needs to provide users with the ability to manually invoke a session lock so users can secure their session if it is necessary to temporarily vacate the immediate physical vicinity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000028-GPOS-00009, SRG-OS-000030-GPOS-00011
SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically lock graphical user sessions after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Medium Severity
A session lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not want to log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined. Rather than be forced to wait for a period of time to expire before the user session can be locked, RHEL 8 needs to provide users with the ability to manually invoke a session lock so users can secure their session if it is necessary to temporarily vacate the immediate physical vicinity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010, SRG-OS-000031-GPOS-00012
SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent a user from overriding the session lock-delay setting for the graphical user interface.
Medium Severity
A session time-out lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. Rather than relying on the user to manually lock their operating system session prior to vacating the vicinity, operating systems need to be able to identify when a user's session has idled and take action to initiate the session lock. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined and/or controlled. Implementing session settings will have little value if a user is able to manipulate these settings from the defaults prescribed in the other requirements of this implementation guide. Locking these settings from non-privileged users is crucial to maintaining a protected baseline. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010, SRG-OS-000031-GPOS-00012, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
SRG-OS-000068-GPOS-00036
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must map the authenticated identity to the user or group account for PKI-based authentication.
Medium Severity
Without mapping the certificate used to authenticate to the user account, the ability to determine the identity of the individual user or group will not be available for forensic analysis. There are various methods of mapping certificates to user/group accounts for RHEL 8. For the purposes of this requirement, the check and fix will account for Active Directory mapping. Some of the other possible methods include joining the system to a domain and utilizing a Red Hat idM server, or a local system mapping, where the system is not part of a domain.
SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure the password complexity module is enabled in the password-auth file.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth
SRG-OS-000069-GPOS-00037
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one uppercase character be used.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes pwquality as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require uppercase characters, without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".
SRG-OS-000070-GPOS-00038
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one lower-case character be used.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes pwquality as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require lower-case characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".
SRG-OS-000071-GPOS-00039
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one numeric character be used.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that in order to require numeric characters, without degrading the minlen value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".
SRG-OS-000072-GPOS-00040
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require the maximum number of repeating characters of the same character class be limited to four when passwords are changed.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. The "maxclassrepeat" option sets the maximum number of allowed same consecutive characters in the same class in the new password.
SRG-OS-000072-GPOS-00040
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require the maximum number of repeating characters be limited to three when passwords are changed.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. The "maxrepeat" option sets the maximum number of allowed same consecutive characters in a new password.
SRG-OS-000072-GPOS-00040
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require the change of at least four character classes when passwords are changed.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. The "minclass" option sets the minimum number of required classes of characters for the new password (digits, uppercase, lowercase, others).
SRG-OS-000072-GPOS-00040
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require the change of at least 8 characters when passwords are changed.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. The "difok" option sets the number of characters in a password that must not be present in the old password.
SRG-OS-000075-GPOS-00043
1 Rule
RHEL 8 passwords must have a 24 hours/1 day minimum password lifetime restriction in /etc/shadow.
Medium Severity
Enforcing a minimum password lifetime helps to prevent repeated password changes to defeat the password reuse or history enforcement requirement. If users are allowed to immediately and continually change their password, the password could be repeatedly changed in a short period of time to defeat the organization's policy regarding password reuse.
SRG-OS-000075-GPOS-00043
1 Rule
RHEL 8 passwords for new users or password changes must have a 24 hours/1 day minimum password lifetime restriction in /etc/login.defs.
Medium Severity
Enforcing a minimum password lifetime helps to prevent repeated password changes to defeat the password reuse or history enforcement requirement. If users are allowed to immediately and continually change their password, the password could be repeatedly changed in a short period of time to defeat the organization's policy regarding password reuse.
SRG-OS-000076-GPOS-00044
1 Rule
RHEL 8 user account passwords must have a 60-day maximum password lifetime restriction.
Medium Severity
Any password, no matter how complex, can eventually be cracked. Therefore, passwords need to be changed periodically. If RHEL 8 does not limit the lifetime of passwords and force users to change their passwords, there is the risk that RHEL 8 passwords could be compromised.
SRG-OS-000076-GPOS-00044
1 Rule
RHEL 8 user account passwords must be configured so that existing passwords are restricted to a 60-day maximum lifetime.
Medium Severity
Any password, no matter how complex, can eventually be cracked. Therefore, passwords need to be changed periodically. If RHEL 8 does not limit the lifetime of passwords and force users to change their passwords, there is the risk that RHEL 8 passwords could be compromised.
SRG-OS-000078-GPOS-00046
1 Rule
RHEL 8 passwords must have a minimum of 15 characters.
Medium Severity
The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Configurations are set in the "etc/security/pwquality.conf" file. The "minlen", sometimes noted as minimum length, acts as a "score" of complexity based on the credit components of the "pwquality" module. By setting the credit components to a negative value, not only will those components be required, they will not count towards the total "score" of "minlen". This will enable "minlen" to require a 15-character minimum. The DoD minimum password requirement is 15 characters.
SRG-OS-000078-GPOS-00046
1 Rule
RHEL 8 passwords for new users must have a minimum of 15 characters.
Medium Severity
The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to increase exponentially the time and/or resources required to compromise the password. The DoD minimum password requirement is 15 characters.
SRG-OS-000104-GPOS-00051
1 Rule
RHEL 8 duplicate User IDs (UIDs) must not exist for interactive users.
Medium Severity
To ensure accountability and prevent unauthenticated access, interactive users must be identified and authenticated to prevent potential misuse and compromise of the system. Interactive users include organizational employees or individuals the organization deems to have equivalent status of employees (e.g., contractors). Interactive users (and processes acting on behalf of users) must be uniquely identified and authenticated to all accesses, except for the following: 1) Accesses explicitly identified and documented by the organization. Organizations document specific user actions that can be performed on the information system without identification or authentication; and 2) Accesses that occur through authorized use of group authenticators without individual authentication. Organizations may require unique identification of individuals in group accounts (e.g., shared privilege accounts) or for detailed accountability of individual activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000104-GPOS-00051, SRG-OS-000121-GPOS-00062, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020
SRG-OS-000105-GPOS-00052
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must implement smart card logon for multifactor authentication for access to interactive accounts.
Medium Severity
Using an authentication device, such as a Common Access Card (CAC) or token that is separate from the information system, ensures that even if the information system is compromised, that compromise will not affect credentials stored on the authentication device. Multifactor solutions that require devices separate from information systems gaining access include, for example, hardware tokens providing time-based or challenge-response authenticators and smart cards such as the U.S. Government Personal Identity Verification card and the DoD CAC. There are various methods of implementing multifactor authentication for RHEL 8. Some methods include a local system multifactor account mapping or joining the system to a domain and utilizing a Red Hat idM server or Microsoft Windows Active Directory server. Any of these methods will require that the client operating system handle the multifactor authentication correctly. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000105-GPOS-00052, SRG-OS-000106-GPOS-00053, SRG-OS-000107-GPOS-00054, SRG-OS-000108-GPOS-00055
SRG-OS-000118-GPOS-00060
1 Rule
RHEL 8 account identifiers (individuals, groups, roles, and devices) must be disabled after 35 days of inactivity.
Medium Severity
Inactive identifiers pose a risk to systems and applications because attackers may exploit an inactive identifier and potentially obtain undetected access to the system. Owners of inactive accounts will not notice if unauthorized access to their user account has been obtained. RHEL 8 needs to track periods of inactivity and disable application identifiers after 35 days of inactivity.
SRG-OS-000123-GPOS-00064
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must automatically expire temporary accounts within 72 hours.
Medium Severity
Temporary accounts are privileged or nonprivileged accounts that are established during pressing circumstances, such as new software or hardware configuration or an incident response, where the need for prompt account activation requires bypassing normal account authorization procedures. If any inactive temporary accounts are left enabled on the system and are not either manually removed or automatically expired within 72 hours, the security posture of the system will be degraded and exposed to exploitation by unauthorized users or insider threat actors. Temporary accounts are different from emergency accounts. Emergency accounts, also known as "last resort" or "break glass" accounts, are local logon accounts enabled on the system for emergency use by authorized system administrators to manage a system when standard logon methods are failing or not available. Emergency accounts are not subject to manual removal or scheduled expiration requirements. The automatic expiration of temporary accounts may be extended as needed by the circumstances but it must not be extended indefinitely. A documented permanent account should be established for privileged users who need long-term maintenance accounts.
SRG-OS-000266-GPOS-00101
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 passwords must contain at least one special character.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determines how long it takes to crack a password. The more complex the password, the greater the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. Note that to require special characters without degrading the "minlen" value, the credit value must be expressed as a negative number in "/etc/security/pwquality.conf".
SRG-OS-000383-GPOS-00166
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prohibit the use of cached authentications after one day.
Medium Severity
If cached authentication information is out-of-date, the validity of the authentication information may be questionable. RHEL 8 includes multiple options for configuring authentication, but this requirement will be focus on the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD). By default sssd does not cache credentials.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00225
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent the use of dictionary words for passwords.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 allows the user to select passwords based on dictionary words, this increases the chances of password compromise by increasing the opportunity for successful guesses, and brute-force attacks.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00226
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enforce a delay of at least four seconds between logon prompts following a failed logon attempt.
Medium Severity
Configuring the operating system to implement organization-wide security implementation guides and security checklists verifies compliance with federal standards and establishes a common security baseline across the DoD that reflects the most restrictive security posture consistent with operational requirements. Configuration settings are the set of parameters that can be changed in hardware, software, or firmware components of the system that affect the security posture and/or functionality of the system. Security-related parameters are those parameters impacting the security state of the system, including the parameters required to satisfy other security control requirements. Security-related parameters include, for example, registry settings; account, file, and directory permission settings; and settings for functions, ports, protocols, services, and remote connections.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not have unnecessary accounts.
Medium Severity
Accounts providing no operational purpose provide additional opportunities for system compromise. Unnecessary accounts include user accounts for individuals not requiring access to the system and application accounts for applications not installed on the system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not allow accounts configured with blank or null passwords.
High Severity
If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display the date and time of the last successful account logon upon logon.
Low Severity
Providing users with feedback on when account accesses last occurred facilitates user recognition and reporting of unauthorized account use.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display the date and time of the last successful account logon upon an SSH logon.
Medium Severity
Providing users with feedback on when account accesses via SSH last occurred facilitates user recognition and reporting of unauthorized account use.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00228
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must define default permissions for all authenticated users in such a way that the user can only read and modify their own files.
Medium Severity
Setting the most restrictive default permissions ensures that when new accounts are created, they do not have unnecessary access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00228
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must set the umask value to 077 for all local interactive user accounts.
Medium Severity
The umask controls the default access mode assigned to newly created files. A umask of 077 limits new files to mode 600 or less permissive. Although umask can be represented as a four-digit number, the first digit representing special access modes is typically ignored or required to be "0". This requirement applies to the globally configured system defaults and the local interactive user defaults for each account on the system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must define default permissions for logon and non-logon shells.
Medium Severity
The umask controls the default access mode assigned to newly created files. A umask of 077 limits new files to mode 600 or less permissive. Although umask can be represented as a four-digit number, the first digit representing special access modes is typically ignored or required to be "0". This requirement applies to the globally configured system defaults and the local interactive user defaults for each account on the system.
SRG-OS-000326-GPOS-00126
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit system must be configured to audit the execution of privileged functions and prevent all software from executing at higher privilege levels than users executing the software.
Medium Severity
Misuse of privileged functions, either intentionally or unintentionally by authorized users, or by unauthorized external entities that have compromised information system accounts, is a serious and ongoing concern and can have significant adverse impacts on organizations. Auditing the use of privileged functions is one way to detect such misuse and identify the risk from insider threats and the advanced persistent threat. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000326-GPOS-00126, SRG-OS-000327-GPOS-00127
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
Cron logging must be implemented in RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
Cron logging can be used to trace the successful or unsuccessful execution of cron jobs. It can also be used to spot intrusions into the use of the cron facility by unauthorized and malicious users.
SRG-OS-000046-GPOS-00022
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 System Administrator (SA) and Information System Security Officer (ISSO) (at a minimum) must be alerted of an audit processing failure event.
Medium Severity
It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without this notification, the security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded. This requirement applies to each audit data storage repository (i.e., distinct information system component where audit records are stored), the centralized audit storage capacity of organizations (i.e., all audit data storage repositories combined), or both.
SRG-OS-000046-GPOS-00022
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and System Administrator (SA) (at a minimum) must have mail aliases to be notified of an audit processing failure.
Medium Severity
It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without this notification, the security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded. This requirement applies to each audit data storage repository (i.e., distinct information system component where audit records are stored), the centralized audit storage capacity of organizations (i.e., all audit data storage repositories combined), or both.
SRG-OS-000047-GPOS-00023
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 System must take appropriate action when an audit processing failure occurs.
Medium Severity
It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without this notification, the security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded. This requirement applies to each audit data storage repository (i.e., distinct information system component where audit records are stored), the centralized audit storage capacity of organizations (i.e., all audit data storage repositories combined), or both.
SRG-OS-000047-GPOS-00023
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit system must take appropriate action when the audit storage volume is full.
Medium Severity
It is critical that when RHEL 8 is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required, it takes action to mitigate the failure. Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors; failures in the audit capturing mechanisms; and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded. Responses to audit failure depend upon the nature of the failure mode. When availability is an overriding concern, other approved actions in response to an audit failure are as follows: 1) If the failure was caused by the lack of audit record storage capacity, RHEL 8 must continue generating audit records if possible (automatically restarting the audit service if necessary) and overwriting the oldest audit records in a first-in-first-out manner. 2) If audit records are sent to a centralized collection server and communication with this server is lost or the server fails, RHEL 8 must queue audit records locally until communication is restored or until the audit records are retrieved manually. Upon restoration of the connection to the centralized collection server, action should be taken to synchronize the local audit data with the collection server.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit system must audit local events.
Medium Severity
Without establishing what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked.
SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must label all off-loaded audit logs before sending them to the central log server.
Medium Severity
Without establishing what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Enriched logging is needed to determine who, what, and when events occur on a system. Without this, determining root cause of an event will be much more difficult. When audit logs are not labeled before they are sent to a central log server, the audit data will not be able to be analyzed and tied back to the correct system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must resolve audit information before writing to disk.
Low Severity
Without establishing what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Enriched logging aids in making sense of who, what, and when events occur on a system. Without this, determining root cause of an event will be much more difficult.
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit logs must have a mode of 0600 or less permissive to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029, SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit logs must be owned by root to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Only authorized personnel should be aware of errors and the details of the errors. Error messages are an indicator of an organization's operational state or can identify the RHEL 8 system or platform. Additionally, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and operational information must not be revealed through error messages to unauthorized personnel or their designated representatives. The structure and content of error messages must be carefully considered by the organization and development team. The extent to which the information system is able to identify and handle error conditions is guided by organizational policy and operational requirements. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029, SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit logs must be group-owned by root to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit log directory must be owned by root to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit log directory must be group-owned by root to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit log directory must have a mode of 0700 or less permissive to prevent unauthorized read access.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 system activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit system must protect auditing rules from unauthorized change.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 system activity. In immutable mode, unauthorized users cannot execute changes to the audit system to potentially hide malicious activity and then put the audit rules back. A system reboot would be noticeable and a system administrator could then investigate the unauthorized changes. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit system must protect logon UIDs from unauthorized change.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit RHEL 8 system activity. In immutable mode, unauthorized users cannot execute changes to the audit system to potentially hide malicious activity and then put the audit rules back. A system reboot would be noticeable and a system administrator could then investigate the unauthorized changes. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/shadow.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/security/opasswd.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/passwd.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/gshadow.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/group.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, CCI-002884, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/sudoers.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, CCI-002884, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/sudoers.d/.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, CCI-002884, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit package must be installed.
Medium Severity
Without establishing what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Associating event types with detected events in RHEL 8 audit logs provides a means of investigating an attack, recognizing resource utilization or capacity thresholds, or identifying an improperly configured RHEL 8 system. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000038-GPOS-00016, SRG-OS-000039-GPOS-00017, SRG-OS-000040-GPOS-00018, SRG-OS-000041-GPOS-00019, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00021, SRG-OS-000051-GPOS-00024, SRG-OS-000054-GPOS-00025, SRG-OS-000122-GPOS-00063, SRG-OS-000254-GPOS-00095, SRG-OS-000255-GPOS-00096, SRG-OS-000337-GPOS-00129, SRG-OS-000348-GPOS-00136, SRG-OS-000349-GPOS-00137, SRG-OS-000350-GPOS-00138, SRG-OS-000351-GPOS-00139, SRG-OS-000352-GPOS-00140, SRG-OS-000353-GPOS-00141, SRG-OS-000354-GPOS-00142, SRG-OS-000358-GPOS-00145, SRG-OS-000365-GPOS-00152, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000475-GPOS-00220
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the su command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "su" command allows a user to run commands with a substitute user and group ID. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000064-GPOS-0003, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit system must be configured to audit any usage of the setxattr, fsetxattr, lsetxattr, removexattr, fremovexattr, and lremovexattr system calls.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). "Setxattr" is a system call used to set an extended attribute value. "Fsetxattr" is a system call used to set an extended attribute value. This is used to set extended attributes on a file. "Lsetxattr" is a system call used to set an extended attribute value. This is used to set extended attributes on a symbolic link. "Removexattr" is a system call that removes extended attributes. "Fremovexattr" is a system call that removes extended attributes. This is used for removal of extended attributes from a file. "Lremovexattr" is a system call that removes extended attributes. This is used for removal of extended attributes from symbolic links. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. The performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000458-GPOS-00203, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000463-GPOS-00207, SRG-OS-000468-GPOS-00212, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000474-GPOS-00219, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chage command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chage" command is used to change or view user password expiry information. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000468-GPOS-00212, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chcon command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chcon" command is used to change file SELinux security context. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000468-GPOS-00212, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the ssh-agent in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "ssh-agent" is a program to hold private keys used for public key authentication. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the passwd command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "passwd" command is used to change passwords for user accounts. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the mount command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "mount" command is used to mount a filesystem. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the umount command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "umount" command is used to unmount a filesystem. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the mount syscall in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "mount" syscall is used to mount a filesystem. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the unix_update in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. "Unix_update" is a helper program for the "pam_unix" module that updates the password for a given user. It is not intended to be run directly from the command line and logs a security violation if done so. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of postdrop in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "postdrop" command creates a file in the maildrop directory and copies its standard input to the file. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of postqueue in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "postqueue" command implements the Postfix user interface for queue management. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of semanage in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "semanage" command is used to configure certain elements of SELinux policy without requiring modification to or recompilation from policy sources. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of setfiles in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "setfiles" command is primarily used to initialize the security context fields (extended attributes) on one or more filesystems (or parts of them). Usually it is initially run as part of the SELinux installation process (a step commonly known as labeling). When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of userhelper in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "userhelper" command is not intended to be run interactively. "Userhelper" provides a basic interface to change a user's password, gecos information, and shell. The main difference between this program and its traditional equivalents (passwd, chfn, chsh) is that prompts are written to standard out to make it easy for a graphical user interface wrapper to interface to it as a child process. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of setsebool in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "setsebool" command sets the current state of a particular SELinux boolean or a list of booleans to a given value. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of unix_chkpwd in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise. The "unix_chkpwd" command is a helper program for the pam_unix module that verifies the password of the current user. It also checks password and account expiration dates in shadow. It is not intended to be run directly from the command line and logs a security violation if done so. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the ssh-keysign in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "ssh-keysign" program is an SSH helper program for host-based authentication. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the setfacl command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "setfacl" command is used to set file access control lists. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the pam_timestamp_check command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "pam_timestamp_check" command is used to check if the default timestamp is valid. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the newgrp command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "newgrp" command is used to change the current group ID during a login session. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the init_module and finit_module system calls in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "init_module" and "finit_module" system calls are used to load a kernel module. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. The performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the rename, unlink, rmdir, renameat, and unlinkat system calls in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "rename" system call will rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence of expression in their name by replacement. The "unlink" system call deletes a name from the filesystem. If that name was the last link to a file and no processes have the file open, the file is deleted and the space it was using is made available for reuse. The "rmdir" system call removes empty directories. The "renameat" system call renames a file, moving it between directories if required. The "unlinkat" system call operates in exactly the same way as either "unlink" or "rmdir" except for the differences described in the manual page. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. Performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the gpasswd command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "gpasswd" command is used to administer /etc/group and /etc/gshadow. Every group can have administrators, members and a password. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the delete_module command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "delete_module" command is used to unload a kernel module. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the crontab command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "crontab" command is used to maintain crontab files for individual users. Crontab is the program used to install, remove, or list the tables used to drive the cron daemon. This is similar to the task scheduler used in other operating systems. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chsh command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chsh" command is used to change the login shell. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the truncate, ftruncate, creat, open, openat, and open_by_handle_at system calls in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "truncate" and "ftruncate" functions are used to truncate a file to a specified length. The "creat" system call is used to open and possibly create a file or device. The "open" system call opens a file specified by a pathname. If the specified file does not exist, it may optionally be created by "open". The "openat" system call opens a file specified by a relative pathname. The "name_to_handle_at" and "open_by_handle_at" system calls split the functionality of "openat" into two parts: "name_to_handle_at" returns an opaque handle that corresponds to a specified file; "open_by_handle_at" opens the file corresponding to a handle returned by a previous call to "name_to_handle_at" and returns an open file descriptor. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. The performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000064-GPOS-00033
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chown, fchown, fchownat, and lchown system calls in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chown" command is used to change file owner and group. The "fchown" system call is used to change the ownership of a file referred to by the open file descriptor. The "fchownat" system call is used to change ownership of a file relative to a directory file descriptor. The "lchown" system call is used to change the ownership of the file specified by a path, which does not dereference symbolic links. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. The performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000064-GPOS-00033, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chmod, fchmod, and fchmodat system calls in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chmod" system call changes the file mode bits of each given file according to mode, which can be either a symbolic representation of changes to make, or an octal number representing the bit pattern for the new mode bits. The "fchmod" system call is used to change permissions of a file. The "fchmodat" system call is used to change permissions of a file relative to a directory file descriptor. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. The system call rules are loaded into a matching engine that intercepts each syscall made by all programs on the system. Therefore, it is very important to use syscall rules only when absolutely necessary since these affect performance. The more rules, the bigger the performance hit. Performance can be helped, however, by combining syscalls into one rule whenever possible. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000064-GPOS-00033, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the sudo command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "sudo" command allows a permitted user to execute a command as the superuser or another user, as specified by the security policy. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the usermod command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "usermod" command modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the chacl command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "chacl" command is used to change the access control list of a file or directory. When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way. 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-000466-GPOS-00210
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful uses of the kmod command in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
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. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "kmod" command is used to control Linux Kernel modules. 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-000471-GPOS-00216, SRG-OS-000477-GPOS-00222
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful modifications to the faillock log file in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
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. 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. From "Pam_Faillock man" pages: Note the default directory that pam_faillock uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. 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
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
Successful/unsuccessful modifications to the lastlog file in RHEL 8 must generate an audit record.
Medium Severity
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. 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
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable auditing of processes that start prior to the audit daemon.
Low Severity
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
SRG-OS-000341-GPOS-00132
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must allocate an audit_backlog_limit of sufficient size to capture processes that start prior to the audit daemon.
Low Severity
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). Allocating an audit_backlog_limit of sufficient size is critical in maintaining a stable boot process. With an insufficient limit allocated, the system is susceptible to boot failures and crashes.
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable Linux audit logging for the USBGuard daemon.
Low Severity
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-000471-GPOS-00215
SRG-OS-000063-GPOS-00032
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must allow only the Information System Security Manager (ISSM) (or individuals or roles appointed by the ISSM) to select which auditable events are to be audited.
Medium Severity
Without the capability to restrict the roles and individuals that can select which events are audited, unauthorized personnel may be able to prevent the auditing of critical events. Misconfigured audits may degrade the system's performance by overwhelming the audit log. Misconfigured audits may also make it more difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.
SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit tools must have a mode of 0755 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Protecting audit information also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit information. RHEL 8 systems providing tools to interface with audit information will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the tools, and the corresponding rights the user enjoys, to make access decisions regarding the access to audit tools. Audit tools include, but are not limited to, vendor-provided and open source audit tools needed to successfully view and manipulate audit information system activity and records. Audit tools include custom queries and report generators.
SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit tools must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
Protecting audit information also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit information. RHEL 8 systems providing tools to interface with audit information will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the tools, and the corresponding rights the user enjoys, to make access decisions regarding the access to audit tools. Audit tools include, but are not limited to, vendor-provided and open source audit tools needed to successfully view and manipulate audit information system activity and records. Audit tools include custom queries and report generators. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098, SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099
SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit tools must be group-owned by root.
Medium Severity
Protecting audit information also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit information. RHEL 8 systems providing tools to interface with audit information will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the tools, and the corresponding rights the user enjoys, to make access decisions regarding the access to audit tools. Audit tools include, but are not limited to, vendor-provided and open source audit tools needed to successfully view and manipulate audit information system activity and records. Audit tools include custom queries and report generators. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098, SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099
SRG-OS-000278-GPOS-00108
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use cryptographic mechanisms to protect the integrity of audit tools.
Medium Severity
Protecting the integrity of the tools used for auditing purposes is a critical step toward ensuring the integrity of audit information. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, and audit reports) needed to successfully audit information system activity. Audit tools include, but are not limited to, vendor-provided and open source audit tools needed to successfully view and manipulate audit information system activity and records. Audit tools include custom queries and report generators. It is not uncommon for attackers to replace the audit tools or inject code into the existing tools with the purpose of providing the capability to hide or erase system activity from the audit logs. To address this risk, audit tools must be cryptographically signed to provide the capability to identify when the audit tools have been modified, manipulated, or replaced. An example is a checksum hash of the file or files.
SRG-OS-000341-GPOS-00132
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must allocate audit record storage capacity to store at least one week of audit records, when audit records are not immediately sent to a central audit record storage facility.
Medium Severity
To ensure RHEL 8 systems have a sufficient storage capacity in which to write the audit logs, RHEL 8 needs to be able to allocate audit record storage capacity. The task of allocating audit record storage capacity is usually performed during initial installation of RHEL 8.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have the packages required for offloading audit logs installed.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. Rsyslog provides three ways to forward message: the traditional UDP transport, which is extremely lossy but standard; the plain TCP based transport, which loses messages only during certain situations but is widely available; and the RELP transport, which does not lose messages but is currently available only as part of the rsyslogd 3.15.0 and above. Examples of each configuration: UDP *.* @remotesystemname TCP *.* @@remotesystemname RELP *.* :omrelp:remotesystemname:2514 Note that a port number was given as there is no standard port for RELP.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have the packages required for encrypting offloaded audit logs installed.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "rsyslog-gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. Rsyslog provides three ways to forward message: the traditional UDP transport, which is extremely lossy but standard; the plain TCP based transport, which loses messages only during certain situations but is widely available; and the RELP transport, which does not lose messages but is currently available only as part of the rsyslogd 3.15.0 and above. Examples of each configuration: UDP *.* @remotesystemname TCP *.* @@remotesystemname RELP *.* :omrelp:remotesystemname:2514 Note that a port number was given as there is no standard port for RELP.
SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 audit records must be off-loaded onto a different system or storage media from the system being audited.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. Rsyslog provides three ways to forward message: the traditional UDP transport, which is extremely lossy but standard; the plain TCP based transport, which loses messages only during certain situations but is widely available; and the RELP transport, which does not lose messages but is currently available only as part of the rsyslogd 3.15.0 and above. Examples of each configuration: UDP *.* @remotesystemname TCP *.* @@remotesystemname RELP *.* :omrelp:remotesystemname:2514 Note that a port number was given as there is no standard port for RELP. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133, SRG-OS-000479-GPOS-00224
SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must take appropriate action when the internal event queue is full.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133, SRG-OS-000479-GPOS-00224
SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must encrypt the transfer of audit records off-loaded onto a different system or media from the system being audited.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133, SRG-OS-000479-GPOS-00224
SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must authenticate the remote logging server for off-loading audit logs.
Medium Severity
Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Off-loading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity. RHEL 8 installation media provides "rsyslogd". "rsyslogd" is a system utility providing support for message logging. Support for both internet and UNIX domain sockets enables this utility to support both local and remote logging. Couple this utility with "gnutls" (which is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols), and you have a method to securely encrypt and off-load auditing. "Rsyslog" supported authentication modes include: anon - anonymous authentication x509/fingerprint - certificate fingerprint authentication x509/certvalid - certificate validation only x509/name - certificate validation and subject name authentication. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000342-GPOS-00133, SRG-OS-000479-GPOS-00224
SRG-OS-000343-GPOS-00134
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must take action when allocated audit record storage volume reaches 75 percent of the repository maximum audit record storage capacity.
Medium Severity
If security personnel are not notified immediately when storage volume reaches 75 percent utilization, they are unable to plan for audit record storage capacity expansion.
SRG-OS-000355-GPOS-00143
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must securely compare internal information system clocks at least every 24 hours with a server synchronized to an authoritative time source, such as the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) time servers, or a time server designated for the appropriate DoD network (NIPRNet/SIPRNet), and/or the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Medium Severity
Inaccurate time stamps make it more difficult to correlate events and can lead to an inaccurate analysis. Determining the correct time a particular event occurred on a system is critical when conducting forensic analysis and investigating system events. Sources outside the configured acceptable allowance (drift) may be inaccurate. Synchronizing internal information system clocks provides uniformity of time stamps for information systems with multiple system clocks and systems connected over a network. Organizations should consider endpoints that may not have regular access to the authoritative time server (e.g., mobile, teleworking, and tactical endpoints). If time stamps are not consistently applied and there is no common time reference, it is difficult to perform forensic analysis. Time stamps generated by the operating system include date and time. Time is commonly expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a modern continuation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or local time with an offset from UTC. RHEL 8 utilizes the "timedatectl" command to view the status of the "systemd-timesyncd.service". The "timedatectl" status will display the local time, UTC, and the offset from UTC. Note that USNO offers authenticated NTP service to DoD and U.S. Government agencies operating on the NIPR and SIPR networks. Visit https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/ntp/dod-customers for more information. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000355-GPOS-00143, SRG-OS-000356-GPOS-00144, SRG-OS-000359-GPOS-00146
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the chrony daemon from acting as a server.
Low Severity
Inaccurate time stamps make it more difficult to correlate events and can lead to an inaccurate analysis. Determining the correct time a particular event occurred on a system is critical when conducting forensic analysis and investigating system events. Sources outside the configured acceptable allowance (drift) may be inaccurate. Minimizing the exposure of the server functionality of the chrony daemon diminishes the attack surface. RHEL 8 utilizes the "timedatectl" command to view the status of the "systemd-timesyncd.service". The "timedatectl" status will display the local time, UTC, and the offset from UTC. Note that USNO offers authenticated NTP service to DOD and U.S. Government agencies operating on the NIPR and SIPR networks. Visit https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/ntp/DOD-customers for more information.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable network management of the chrony daemon.
Low Severity
Inaccurate time stamps make it more difficult to correlate events and can lead to an inaccurate analysis. Determining the correct time a particular event occurred on a system is critical when conducting forensic analysis and investigating system events. Sources outside the configured acceptable allowance (drift) may be inaccurate. Not exposing the management interface of the chrony daemon on the network diminishes the attack space. RHEL 8 utilizes the "timedatectl" command to view the status of the "systemd-timesyncd.service". The "timedatectl" status will display the local time, UTC, and the offset from UTC. Note that USNO offers authenticated NTP service to DOD and U.S. Government agencies operating on the NIPR and SIPR networks. Visit https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/ntp/DOD-customers for more information.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not have the telnet-server package installed.
High Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). Examples of non-essential capabilities include, but are not limited to, games, software packages, tools, and demonstration software not related to requirements or providing a wide array of functionality not required for every mission, but which cannot be disabled. Verify the operating system is configured to disable non-essential capabilities. The most secure way of ensuring a non-essential capability is disabled is to not have the capability installed. The telnet service provides an unencrypted remote access service that does not provide for the confidentiality and integrity of user passwords or the remote session. If a privileged user were to log on using this service, the privileged user password could be compromised.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not have any automated bug reporting tools installed.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). Examples of non-essential capabilities include, but are not limited to, games, software packages, tools, and demonstration software not related to requirements or providing a wide array of functionality not required for every mission, but which cannot be disabled. Verify the operating system is configured to disable non-essential capabilities. The most secure way of ensuring a non-essential capability is disabled is to not have the capability installed.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not have the sendmail package installed.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). Examples of non-essential capabilities include, but are not limited to, games, software packages, tools, and demonstration software not related to requirements or providing a wide array of functionality not required for every mission, but which cannot be disabled. Verify the operating system is configured to disable non-essential capabilities. The most secure way of ensuring a non-essential capability is disabled is to not have the capability installed.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable mitigations against processor-based vulnerabilities.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). Examples of non-essential capabilities include, but are not limited to, games, software packages, tools, and demonstration software not related to requirements or providing a wide array of functionality not required for every mission, but which cannot be disabled. Verify the operating system is configured to disable non-essential capabilities. The most secure way of ensuring a non-essential capability is disabled is to not have the capability installed. Kernel page-table isolation is a kernel feature that mitigates the Meltdown security vulnerability and hardens the kernel against attempts to bypass kernel address space layout randomization (KASLR).
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not have the rsh-server package installed.
High Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). The rsh-server service provides an unencrypted remote access service that does not provide for the confidentiality and integrity of user passwords or the remote session and has very weak authentication. If a privileged user were to log on using this service, the privileged user password could be compromised. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049, SRG-OS-000074-GPOS-00042
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must cover or disable the built-in or attached camera when not in use.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Failing to disconnect from collaborative computing devices (i.e., cameras) can result in subsequent compromises of organizational information. Providing easy methods to physically disconnect from such devices after a collaborative computing session helps to ensure participants actually carry out the disconnect activity without having to go through complex and tedious procedures. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049, SRG-OS-000370-GPOS-00155
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) protocol.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Failing to disconnect unused protocols can result in a system compromise. The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a protocol operating on network, data link, and physical layers, based on virtual circuits and virtual paths. Disabling ATM protects the system against exploitation of any laws in its implementation.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the controller area network (CAN) protocol.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Failing to disconnect unused protocols can result in a system compromise. The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a serial communications protocol, which was initially developed for automotive and is now also used in marine, industrial, and medical applications. Disabling CAN protects the system against exploitation of any flaws in its implementation.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the stream control transmission protocol (SCTP).
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Failing to disconnect unused protocols can result in a system compromise. The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a transport layer protocol, designed to support the idea of message-oriented communication, with several streams of messages within one connection. Disabling SCTP protects the system against exploitation of any flaws in its implementation.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the transparent inter-process communication (TIPC) protocol.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Failing to disconnect unused protocols can result in a system compromise. The Transparent Inter-Process Communication (TIPC) protocol is designed to provide communications between nodes in a cluster. Disabling TIPC protects the system against exploitation of any flaws in its implementation.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable mounting of cramfs.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Removing support for unneeded filesystem types reduces the local attack surface of the server. Compressed ROM/RAM file system (or cramfs) is a read-only file system designed for simplicity and space-efficiency. It is mainly used in embedded and small-footprint systems.
SRG-OS-000095-GPOS-00049
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable IEEE 1394 (FireWire) Support.
Low Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The IEEE 1394 (FireWire) is a serial bus standard for high-speed real-time communication. Disabling FireWire protects the system against exploitation of any flaws in its implementation.
SRG-OS-000096-GPOS-00050
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured to prohibit or restrict the use of functions, ports, protocols, and/or services, as defined in the Ports, Protocols, and Services Management (PPSM) Category Assignments List (CAL) and vulnerability assessments.
Medium Severity
To prevent unauthorized connection of devices, unauthorized transfer of information, or unauthorized tunneling (i.e., embedding of data types within data types), organizations must disable or restrict unused or unnecessary physical and logical ports/protocols on information systems. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services provided by default may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations. Additionally, it is sometimes convenient to provide multiple services from a single component (e.g., VPN and IPS); however, doing so increases risk over limiting the services provided by any one component. To support the requirements and principles of least functionality, the operating system must support the organizational requirements, providing only essential capabilities and limiting the use of ports, protocols, and/or services to only those required, authorized, and approved to conduct official business or to address authorized quality-of-life issues.
SRG-OS-000114-GPOS-00059
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 file system automounter must be disabled unless required.
Medium Severity
Automatically mounting file systems permits easy introduction of unknown devices, thereby facilitating malicious activity.
SRG-OS-000114-GPOS-00059
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured to disable USB mass storage.
Medium Severity
USB mass storage permits easy introduction of unknown devices, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000114-GPOS-00059, SRG-OS-000378-GPOS-00163
SRG-OS-000297-GPOS-00115
1 Rule
A RHEL 8 firewall must employ a deny-all, allow-by-exception policy for allowing connections to other systems.
Medium Severity
Failure to restrict network connectivity only to authorized systems permits inbound connections from malicious systems. It also permits outbound connections that may facilitate exfiltration of DoD data. RHEL 8 incorporates the "firewalld" daemon, which allows for many different configurations. One of these configurations is zones. Zones can be utilized to a deny-all, allow-by-exception approach. The default "drop" zone will drop all incoming network packets unless it is explicitly allowed by the configuration file or is related to an outgoing network connection.
SRG-OS-000297-GPOS-00115
1 Rule
A firewall must be installed on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
"Firewalld" provides an easy and effective way to block/limit remote access to the system via ports, services, and protocols. Remote access services, such as those providing remote access to network devices and information systems, which lack automated control capabilities, increase risk and make remote user access management difficult at best. Remote access is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. RHEL 8 functionality (e.g., RDP) must be capable of taking enforcement action if the audit reveals unauthorized activity. Automated control of remote access sessions allows organizations to ensure ongoing compliance with remote access policies by enforcing connection rules of remote access applications on a variety of information system components (e.g., servers, workstations, notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets).
SRG-OS-000299-GPOS-00117
1 Rule
RHEL 8 wireless network adapters must be disabled.
Medium Severity
Without protection of communications with wireless peripherals, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised because unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read, altered, or used to compromise the RHEL 8 operating system. This requirement applies to wireless peripheral technologies (e.g., wireless mice, keyboards, displays, etc.) used with RHEL 8 systems. Wireless peripherals (e.g., Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/IR Keyboards, Mice, and Pointing Devices and Near Field Communications [NFC]) present a unique challenge by creating an open, unsecured port on a computer. Wireless peripherals must meet DoD requirements for wireless data transmission and be approved for use by the Authorizing Official (AO). Even though some wireless peripherals, such as mice and pointing devices, do not ordinarily carry information that need to be protected, modification of communications with these wireless peripherals may be used to compromise the RHEL 8 operating system. Communication paths outside the physical protection of a controlled boundary are exposed to the possibility of interception and modification. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of communications with wireless peripherals can be accomplished by physical means (e.g., employing physical barriers to wireless radio frequencies) or by logical means (e.g., employing cryptographic techniques). If physical means of protection are employed, then logical means (cryptography) do not have to be employed, and vice versa. If the wireless peripheral is only passing telemetry data, encryption of the data may not be required. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000299-GPOS-00117, SRG-OS-000300-GPOS-00118, SRG-OS-000481-GPOS-000481
SRG-OS-000300-GPOS-00118
1 Rule
RHEL 8 Bluetooth must be disabled.
Medium Severity
Without protection of communications with wireless peripherals, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised because unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read, altered, or used to compromise the RHEL 8 operating system. This requirement applies to wireless peripheral technologies (e.g., wireless mice, keyboards, displays, etc.) used with RHEL 8 systems. Wireless peripherals (e.g., Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/IR Keyboards, Mice, and Pointing Devices and Near Field Communications [NFC]) present a unique challenge by creating an open, unsecured port on a computer. Wireless peripherals must meet DoD requirements for wireless data transmission and be approved for use by the Authorizing Official (AO). Even though some wireless peripherals, such as mice and pointing devices, do not ordinarily carry information that need to be protected, modification of communications with these wireless peripherals may be used to compromise the RHEL 8 operating system. Communication paths outside the physical protection of a controlled boundary are exposed to the possibility of interception and modification. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of communications with wireless peripherals can be accomplished by physical means (e.g., employing physical barriers to wireless radio frequencies) or by logical means (e.g., employing cryptographic techniques). If physical means of protection are employed, then logical means (cryptography) do not have to be employed, and vice versa. If the wireless peripheral is only passing telemetry data, encryption of the data may not be required.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /dev/shm with the nodev option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /dev/shm with the nosuid option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /dev/shm with the noexec option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /tmp with the nodev option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /tmp with the nosuid option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /tmp with the noexec option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log with the nodev option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log with the nosuid option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log with the noexec option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log/audit with the nodev option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log/audit with the nosuid option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/log/audit with the noexec option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/tmp with the nodev option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/tmp with the nosuid option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must mount /var/tmp with the noexec option.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. The "noexec" mount option causes the system to not execute binary files. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved binary files, as they may be incompatible. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nodev" mount option causes the system to not interpret character or block special devices. Executing character or block special devices from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access. The "nosuid" mount option causes the system to not execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 fapolicy module must be installed.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. Utilizing a whitelist provides a configuration management method for allowing the execution of only authorized software. Using only authorized software decreases risk by limiting the number of potential vulnerabilities. Verification of whitelisted software occurs prior to execution or at system startup. User home directories/folders may contain information of a sensitive nature. Non-privileged users should coordinate any sharing of information with an SA through shared resources. RHEL 8 ships with many optional packages. One such package is a file access policy daemon called "fapolicyd". "fapolicyd" is a userspace daemon that determines access rights to files based on attributes of the process and file. It can be used to either blacklist or whitelist processes or file access. Proceed with caution with enforcing the use of this daemon. Improper configuration may render the system non-functional. The "fapolicyd" API is not namespace aware and can cause issues when launching or running containers. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154, SRG-OS-000370-GPOS-00155, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00232
SRG-OS-000378-GPOS-00163
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must block unauthorized peripherals before establishing a connection.
Medium Severity
Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Peripherals include, but are not limited to, such devices as flash drives, external storage, and printers. A new feature that RHEL 8 provides is the USBGuard software framework. The USBguard-daemon is the main component of the USBGuard software framework. It runs as a service in the background and enforces the USB device authorization policy for all USB devices. The policy is defined by a set of rules using a rule language described in the usbguard-rules.conf file. The policy and the authorization state of USB devices can be modified during runtime using the usbguard tool. The System Administrator (SA) must work with the site Information System Security Officer (ISSO) to determine a list of authorized peripherals and establish rules within the USBGuard software framework to allow only authorized devices.
SRG-OS-000420-GPOS-00186
1 Rule
A firewall must be able to protect against or limit the effects of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks by ensuring RHEL 8 can implement rate-limiting measures on impacted network interfaces.
Medium Severity
DoS is a condition when a resource is not available for legitimate users. When this occurs, the organization either cannot accomplish its mission or must operate at degraded capacity. This requirement addresses the configuration of RHEL 8 to mitigate the impact of DoS attacks that have occurred or are ongoing on system availability. For each system, known and potential DoS attacks must be identified and solutions for each type implemented. A variety of technologies exists to limit or, in some cases, eliminate the effects of DoS attacks (e.g., limiting processes or establishing memory partitions). Employing increased capacity and bandwidth, combined with service redundancy, may reduce the susceptibility to some DoS attacks. Since version 0.6.0, "firewalld" has incorporated "nftables" as its backend support. Utilizing the limit statement in "nftables" can help to mitigate DoS attacks.
SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 networked systems must have and implement SSH to protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted and received information, as well as information during preparation for transmission.
Medium Severity
Without protection of the transmitted information, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised because unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read or altered. This requirement applies to both internal and external networks and all types of information system components from which information can be transmitted (e.g., servers, mobile devices, notebook computers, printers, copiers, scanners, and facsimile machines). Communication paths outside the physical protection of a controlled boundary are exposed to the possibility of interception and modification. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of organizational information can be accomplished by physical means (e.g., employing physical distribution systems) or by logical means (e.g., employing cryptographic techniques). If physical means of protection are employed, then logical means (cryptography) do not have to be employed, and vice versa. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187, SRG-OS-000424-GPOS-00188, SRG-OS-000425-GPOS-00189, SRG-OS-000426-GPOS-00190
SRG-OS-000033-GPOS-00014
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must force a frequent session key renegotiation for SSH connections to the server.
Medium Severity
Without protection of the transmitted information, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised because unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read or altered. This requirement applies to both internal and external networks and all types of information system components from which information can be transmitted (e.g., servers, mobile devices, notebook computers, printers, copiers, scanners, and facsimile machines). Communication paths outside the physical protection of a controlled boundary are exposed to the possibility of interception and modification. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of organizational information can be accomplished by physical means (e.g., employing physical distribution systems) or by logical means (e.g., employing cryptographic techniques). If physical means of protection are employed, then logical means (cryptography) do not have to be employed, and vice versa. Session key regeneration limits the chances of a session key becoming compromised. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000033-GPOS-00014, SRG-OS-000420-GPOS-00186, SRG-OS-000424-GPOS-00188
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The x86 Ctrl-Alt-Delete key sequence must be disabled on RHEL 8.
High Severity
A locally logged-on user, who presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete when at the console, can reboot the system. If accidentally pressed, as could happen in the case of a mixed OS environment, this can create the risk of short-term loss of availability of systems due to unintentional reboot. In a graphical user environment, risk of unintentional reboot from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence is reduced because the user will be prompted before any action is taken.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The x86 Ctrl-Alt-Delete key sequence in RHEL 8 must be disabled if a graphical user interface is installed.
High Severity
A locally logged-on user, who presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete, when at the console, can reboot the system. If accidentally pressed, as could happen in the case of a mixed OS environment, this can create the risk of short-term loss of availability of systems due to unintentional reboot. In a graphical user environment, risk of unintentional reboot from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence is reduced because the user will be prompted before any action is taken.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The systemd Ctrl-Alt-Delete burst key sequence in RHEL 8 must be disabled.
High Severity
A locally logged-on user who presses Ctrl-Alt-Delete when at the console can reboot the system. If accidentally pressed, as could happen in the case of a mixed OS environment, this can create the risk of short-term loss of availability of systems due to unintentional reboot. In a graphical user environment, risk of unintentional reboot from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence is reduced because the user will be prompted before any action is taken.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The debug-shell systemd service must be disabled on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
The debug-shell requires no authentication and provides root privileges to anyone who has physical access to the machine. While this feature is disabled by default, masking it adds an additional layer of assurance that it will not be enabled via a dependency in systemd. This also prevents attackers with physical access from trivially bypassing security on the machine through valid troubleshooting configurations and gaining root access when the system is rebooted.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server package must not be installed if not required for RHEL 8 operational support.
High Severity
If TFTP is required for operational support (such as the transmission of router configurations) its use must be documented with the Information System Security Officer (ISSO), restricted to only authorized personnel, and have access control rules established.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The root account must be the only account having unrestricted access to the RHEL 8 system.
High Severity
If an account other than root also has a User Identifier (UID) of "0", it has root authority, giving that account unrestricted access to the entire operating system. Multiple accounts with a UID of "0" afford an opportunity for potential intruders to guess a password for a privileged account.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent IPv6 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages from being accepted.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages modify the host's route table and are unauthenticated. An illicit ICMP redirect message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not send Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirects.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages contain information from the system's route table, possibly revealing portions of the network topology. There are notable differences between Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). There is only a directive to disable sending of IPv4 redirected packets. Refer to RFC4294 for an explanation of "IPv6 Node Requirements", which resulted in this difference between IPv4 and IPv6. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not respond to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echoes sent to a broadcast address.
Medium Severity
Responding to broadcast ICMP echoes facilitates network mapping and provides a vector for amplification attacks. There are notable differences between Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). IPv6 does not implement the same method of broadcast as IPv4. Instead, IPv6 uses multicast addressing to the all-hosts multicast group. Refer to RFC4294 for an explanation of "IPv6 Node Requirements", which resulted in this difference between IPv4 and IPv6. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not forward IPv6 source-routed packets.
Medium Severity
Source-routed packets allow the source of the packet to suggest that routers forward the packet along a different path than configured on the router, which can be used to bypass network security measures. This requirement applies only to the forwarding of source-routed traffic, such as when forwarding is enabled and the system is functioning as a router. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not forward IPv6 source-routed packets by default.
Medium Severity
Source-routed packets allow the source of the packet to suggest that routers forward the packet along a different path than configured on the router, which can be used to bypass network security measures. This requirement applies only to the forwarding of source-routed traffic, such as when forwarding is enabled and the system is functioning as a router. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not enable IPv6 packet forwarding unless the system is a router.
Medium Severity
Routing protocol daemons are typically used on routers to exchange network topology information with other routers. If this software is used when not required, system network information may be unnecessarily transmitted across the network. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not accept router advertisements on all IPv6 interfaces.
Medium Severity
Routing protocol daemons are typically used on routers to exchange network topology information with other routers. If this software is used when not required, system network information may be unnecessarily transmitted across the network. An illicit router advertisement message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not accept router advertisements on all IPv6 interfaces by default.
Medium Severity
Routing protocol daemons are typically used on routers to exchange network topology information with other routers. If this software is used when not required, system network information may be unnecessarily transmitted across the network. An illicit router advertisement message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not allow interfaces to perform Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirects by default.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages contain information from the system's route table, possibly revealing portions of the network topology. There are notable differences between Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). There is only a directive to disable sending of IPv4 redirected packets. Refer to RFC4294 for an explanation of "IPv6 Node Requirements", which resulted in this difference between IPv4 and IPv6. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ignore IPv6 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages modify the host's route table and are unauthenticated. An illicit ICMP redirect message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable access to network bpf syscall from unprivileged processes.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must restrict usage of ptrace to descendant processes.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must restrict exposed kernel pointer addresses access.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the use of user namespaces.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use reverse path filtering on all IPv4 interfaces.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured to prevent unrestricted mail relaying.
Medium Severity
If unrestricted mail relaying is permitted, unauthorized senders could use this host as a mail relay for the purpose of sending spam or other unauthorized activity.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 file integrity tool must be configured to verify extended attributes.
Low Severity
Extended attributes in file systems are used to contain arbitrary data and file metadata with security implications. RHEL 8 installation media come with a file integrity tool, Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment (AIDE).
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 file integrity tool must be configured to verify Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Low Severity
ACLs can provide permissions beyond those permitted through the file mode and must be verified by file integrity tools. RHEL 8 installation media come with a file integrity tool, Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment (AIDE).
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The graphical display manager must not be installed on RHEL 8 unless approved.
Medium Severity
Internet services that are not required for system or application processes must not be active to decrease the attack surface of the system. Graphical display managers have a long history of security vulnerabilities and must not be used, unless approved and documented.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 network interfaces must not be in promiscuous mode.
Medium Severity
Network interfaces in promiscuous mode allow for the capture of all network traffic visible to the system. If unauthorized individuals can access these applications, it may allow them to collect information such as logon IDs, passwords, and key exchanges between systems. If the system is being used to perform a network troubleshooting function, the use of these tools must be documented with the Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and restricted to only authorized personnel.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 remote X connections for interactive users must be disabled unless to fulfill documented and validated mission requirements.
Medium Severity
The security risk of using X11 forwarding is that the client's X11 display server may be exposed to attack when the SSH client requests forwarding. A system administrator may have a stance in which they want to protect clients that may expose themselves to attack by unwittingly requesting X11 forwarding, which can warrant a "no" setting. X11 forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the user's X11 authorization database) can access the local X11 display through the forwarded connection. An attacker may then be able to perform activities such as keystroke monitoring if the ForwardX11Trusted option is also enabled. If X11 services are not required for the system's intended function, they should be disabled or restricted as appropriate to the system’s needs.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must prevent remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.
Medium Severity
When X11 forwarding is enabled, there may be additional exposure to the server and client displays if the sshd proxy display is configured to listen on the wildcard address. By default, sshd binds the forwarding server to the loopback address and sets the hostname part of the DIPSLAY environment variable to localhost. This prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
If the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server is required, the RHEL 8 TFTP daemon must be configured to operate in secure mode.
Medium Severity
Restricting TFTP to a specific directory prevents remote users from copying, transferring, or overwriting system files.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
A File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server package must not be installed unless mission essential on RHEL 8.
High Severity
The FTP service provides an unencrypted remote access that does not provide for the confidentiality and integrity of user passwords or the remote session. If a privileged user were to log on using this service, the privileged user password could be compromised. SSH or other encrypted file transfer methods must be used in place of this service.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The gssproxy package must not be installed unless mission essential on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). The gssproxy package is a proxy for GSS API credential handling and could expose secrets on some networks. It is not needed for normal function of the OS.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The iprutils package must not be installed unless mission essential on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). The iprutils package provides a suite of utilities to manage and configure SCSI devices supported by the ipr SCSI storage device driver.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The tuned package must not be installed unless mission essential on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Operating systems are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services, provided by default, may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations (e.g., key missions, functions). The tuned package contains a daemon that tunes the system settings dynamically. It does so by monitoring the usage of several system components periodically. Based on that information, components will then be put into lower or higher power savings modes to adapt to the current usage. The tuned package is not needed for normal OS operations.
SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061
1 Rule
The krb5-server package must not be installed on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. RHEL 8 systems utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. Currently, Kerberos does not utilize FIPS 140-2 cryptography. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must restrict privilege elevation to authorized personnel.
Medium Severity
The sudo command allows a user to execute programs with elevated (administrator) privileges. It prompts the user for their password and confirms your request to execute a command by checking a file, called sudoers. If the "sudoers" file is not configured correctly, any user defined on the system can initiate privileged actions on the target system.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use the invoking user's password for privilege escalation when using "sudo".
Medium Severity
The sudoers security policy requires that users authenticate themselves before they can use sudo. When sudoers requires authentication, it validates the invoking user's credentials. If the rootpw, targetpw, or runaspw flags are defined and not disabled, by default the operating system will prompt the invoking user for the "root" user password. For more information on each of the listed configurations, reference the sudoers(5) manual page.
SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must require re-authentication when using the "sudo" command.
Medium Severity
Without re-authentication, users may access resources or perform tasks for which they do not have authorization. When operating systems provide the capability to escalate a functional capability, it is critical the organization requires the user to re-authenticate when using the "sudo" command. If the value is set to an integer less than 0, the user's time stamp will not expire and the user will not have to re-authenticate for privileged actions until the user's session is terminated.
SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must display a banner before granting local or remote access to the system via a graphical user logon.
Medium Severity
Display of a standardized and approved use notification before granting access to the operating system ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards, and guidance. System use notifications are required only for access via logon interfaces with human users and are not required when such human interfaces do not exist. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000023-GPOS-00006, SRG-OS-000228-GPOS-00088
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems booted with United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) must require a unique superusers name upon booting into single-user mode and maintenance.
Medium Severity
If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu. The GRUB 2 superuser account is an account of last resort. Establishing a unique username for this account hardens the boot loader against brute force attacks. Due to the nature of the superuser account database being distinct from the OS account database, this allows the use of a username that is not among those within the OS account database. Examples of non-unique superusers names are root, superuser, unlock, etc.
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems booted with a BIOS must require a unique superusers name upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.
Medium Severity
If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu. The GRUB 2 superuser account is an account of last resort. Establishing a unique username for this account hardens the boot loader against brute force attacks. Due to the nature of the superuser account database being distinct from the OS account database, this allows the use of a username that is not among those within the OS account database. Examples of non-unique superusers names are root, superuser, unlock, etc.
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
1 Rule
RHEL 8 operating systems must require authentication upon booting into emergency mode.
Medium Severity
If the system does not require valid root authentication before it boots into emergency or rescue mode, anyone who invokes emergency or rescue mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system.
SRG-OS-000120-GPOS-00061
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 pam_unix.so module must be configured in the system-auth file to use a FIPS 140-2 approved cryptographic hashing algorithm for system authentication.
Medium Severity
Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. RHEL 8 systems utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules utilize authentication that meets DoD requirements. This allows for Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on a general-purpose computing system.
SRG-OS-000163-GPOS-00072
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive.
Medium Severity
Terminating an unresponsive SSH session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended. In addition, quickly terminating an idle SSH session will also free up resources committed by the managed network element. Terminating network connections associated with communications sessions includes, for example, deallocating associated TCP/IP address/port pairs at the operating system level and deallocating networking assignments at the application level if multiple application sessions are using a single operating system-level network connection. This does not mean that the operating system terminates all sessions or network access; it only ends the unresponsive session and releases the resources associated with that session. RHEL 8 uses /etc/ssh/sshd_config for configurations of OpenSSH. Within the sshd_config, the product of the values of "ClientAliveInterval" and "ClientAliveCountMax" is used to establish the inactivity threshold. The "ClientAliveInterval" is a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. The "ClientAliveCountMax" is the number of client alive messages that may be sent without sshd receiving any messages back from the client. If this threshold is met, sshd will disconnect the client. For more information on these settings and others, refer to the sshd_config man pages. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000163-GPOS-00072, SRG-OS-000126-GPOS-00066, SRG-OS-000279-GPOS-00109
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must be configured to use system-wide crypto policies.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Remote access (e.g., RDP) is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. Cryptographic mechanisms used for protecting the integrity of information include, for example, signed hash functions using asymmetric cryptography enabling distribution of the public key to verify the hash information while maintaining the confidentiality of the secret key used to generate the hash. RHEL 8 incorporates system-wide crypto policies by default. The SSH configuration file has no effect on the ciphers, MACs, or algorithms unless specifically defined in the /etc/sysconfig/sshd file. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/ directory. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093, SRG-OS-000393-GPOS-00173, SRG-OS-000394-GPOS-00174, SRG-OS-000125-GPOS-00065
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have the packages required to use the hardware random number generator entropy gatherer service.
Low Severity
The most important characteristic of a random number generator is its randomness, namely its ability to deliver random numbers that are impossible to predict. Entropy in computer security is associated with the unpredictability of a source of randomness. The random source with high entropy tends to achieve a uniform distribution of random values. Random number generators are one of the most important building blocks of cryptosystems. The rngd service feeds random data from hardware device to kernel random device. Quality (non-predictable) random number generation is important for several security functions (i.e., ciphers).
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 SSH daemon must not allow GSSAPI authentication, except to fulfill documented and validated mission requirements.
Medium Severity
Configuring this setting for the SSH daemon provides additional assurance that remote logon via SSH will require a password, even in the event of misconfiguration elsewhere.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must use a separate file system for /var/tmp.
Medium Severity
The use of separate file systems for different paths can protect the system from failures resulting from a file system becoming full or failing.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent files with the setuid and setgid bit set from being executed on the /boot/efi directory.
Medium Severity
The "nosuid" mount option causes the system not to execute "setuid" and "setgid" files with owner privileges. This option must be used for mounting any file system not containing approved "setuid" and "setguid" files. Executing files from untrusted file systems increases the opportunity for unprivileged users to attain unauthorized administrative access.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 local interactive user home directory files must have mode 0750 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
Excessive permissions on local interactive user home directories may allow unauthorized access to user files by other users.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured so that all files and directories contained in local interactive user home directories are group-owned by a group of which the home directory owner is a member.
Medium Severity
If a local interactive user's files are group-owned by a group of which the user is not a member, unintended users may be able to access them.
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must configure the use of the pam_faillock.so module in the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. The preauth argument must be used when the module is called before the modules which ask for the user credentials such as the password. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must configure the use of the pam_faillock.so module in the /etc/pam.d/password-auth file.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. In RHEL 8.2 the "/etc/security/faillock.conf" file was incorporated to centralize the configuration of the pam_faillock.so module. Also introduced is a "local_users_only" option that will only track failed user authentication attempts for local users in /etc/passwd and ignore centralized (AD, IdM, LDAP, etc.) users to allow the centralized platform to solely manage user lockout. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. The preauth argument must be used when the module is called before the modules which ask for the user credentials such as the password. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005, SRG-OS-000329-GPOS-00128
SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must initiate a session lock for graphical user interfaces when the screensaver is activated.
Medium Severity
A session time-out lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. Rather than relying on the user to manually lock their operating system session prior to vacating the vicinity, operating systems need to be able to identify when a user's session has idled and take action to initiate the session lock. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined and/or controlled. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010, SRG-OS-000031-GPOS-00012, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must disable the user list at logon for graphical user interfaces.
Medium Severity
Leaving the user list enabled is a security risk since it allows anyone with physical access to the system to enumerate known user accounts without authenticated access to the system.
SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent a user from overriding the session idle-delay setting for the graphical user interface.
Medium Severity
A session time-out lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. Rather than relying on the user to manually lock their operating system session prior to vacating the vicinity, operating systems need to be able to identify when a user's session has idled and take action to initiate the session lock. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined and/or controlled. Implementing session settings will have little value if a user is able to manipulate these settings from the defaults prescribed in the other requirements of this implementation guide. Locking these settings from non-privileged users is crucial to maintaining a protected baseline. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010, SRG-OS-000031-GPOS-00012, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent a user from overriding the screensaver lock-enabled setting for the graphical user interface.
Medium Severity
A session time-out lock is a temporary action taken when a user stops work and moves away from the immediate physical vicinity of the information system but does not log out because of the temporary nature of the absence. Rather than relying on the user to manually lock their operating system session prior to vacating the vicinity, operating systems need to be able to identify when a user's session has idled and take action to initiate the session lock. The session lock is implemented at the point where session activity can be determined and/or controlled. Implementing session settings will have little value if a user is able to manipulate these settings from the defaults prescribed in the other requirements of this implementation guide. Locking these settings from non-privileged users is crucial to maintaining a protected baseline. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000029-GPOS-00010, SRG-OS-000031-GPOS-00012, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not allow blank or null passwords in the password-auth file.
High Severity
If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
1 Rule
RHEL 8 audit records must contain information to establish what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events.
Medium Severity
Without establishing what type of events occurred, the source of events, where events occurred, and the outcome of events, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Associating event types with detected events in RHEL 8 audit logs provides a means of investigating an attack, recognizing resource utilization or capacity thresholds, or identifying an improperly configured RHEL 8 system. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000038-GPOS-00016, SRG-OS-000039-GPOS-00017, SRG-OS-000040-GPOS-00018, SRG-OS-000041-GPOS-00019, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00021, SRG-OS-000051-GPOS-00024, SRG-OS-000054-GPOS-00025, SRG-OS-000122-GPOS-00063, SRG-OS-000254-GPOS-00095, SRG-OS-000255-GPOS-00096, SRG-OS-000337-GPOS-00129, SRG-OS-000348-GPOS-00136, SRG-OS-000349-GPOS-00137, SRG-OS-000350-GPOS-00138, SRG-OS-000351-GPOS-00139, SRG-OS-000352-GPOS-00140, SRG-OS-000353-GPOS-00141, SRG-OS-000354-GPOS-00142, SRG-OS-000358-GPOS-00145, SRG-OS-000365-GPOS-00152, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000475-GPOS-00220
SRG-OS-000343-GPOS-00134
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must notify the System Administrator (SA) and Information System Security Officer (ISSO) (at a minimum) when allocated audit record storage volume 75 percent utilization.
Medium Severity
If security personnel are not notified immediately when storage volume reaches 75 percent utilization, they are unable to plan for audit record storage capacity expansion.
SRG-OS-000297-GPOS-00115
1 Rule
A firewall must be active on RHEL 8.
Medium Severity
"Firewalld" provides an easy and effective way to block/limit remote access to the system via ports, services, and protocols. Remote access services, such as those providing remote access to network devices and information systems, which lack automated control capabilities, increase risk and make remote user access management difficult at best. Remote access is access to DoD nonpublic information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include, for example, dial-up, broadband, and wireless. RHEL 8 functionality (e.g., RDP) must be capable of taking enforcement action if the audit reveals unauthorized activity. Automated control of remote access sessions allows organizations to ensure ongoing compliance with remote access policies by enforcing connection rules of remote access applications on a variety of information system components (e.g., servers, workstations, notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets).
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 fapolicy module must be enabled.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. Utilizing a whitelist provides a configuration management method for allowing the execution of only authorized software. Using only authorized software decreases risk by limiting the number of potential vulnerabilities. Verification of whitelisted software occurs prior to execution or at system startup. User home directories/folders may contain information of a sensitive nature. Non-privileged users should coordinate any sharing of information with an SA through shared resources. RHEL 8 ships with many optional packages. One such package is a file access policy daemon called "fapolicyd". "fapolicyd" is a userspace daemon that determines access rights to files based on attributes of the process and file. It can be used to either blacklist or whitelist processes or file access. Proceed with caution with enforcing the use of this daemon. Improper configuration may render the system non-functional. The "fapolicyd" API is not namespace aware and can cause issues when launching or running containers. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154, SRG-OS-000370-GPOS-00155, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00232
SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 fapolicy module must be configured to employ a deny-all, permit-by-exception policy to allow the execution of authorized software programs.
Medium Severity
The organization must identify authorized software programs and permit execution of authorized software. The process used to identify software programs that are authorized to execute on organizational information systems is commonly referred to as whitelisting. Utilizing a whitelist provides a configuration management method for allowing the execution of only authorized software. Using only authorized software decreases risk by limiting the number of potential vulnerabilities. Verification of whitelisted software occurs prior to execution or at system startup. User home directories/folders may contain information of a sensitive nature. Non-privileged users should coordinate any sharing of information with an SA through shared resources. RHEL 8 ships with many optional packages. One such package is a file access policy daemon called "fapolicyd". "fapolicyd" is a userspace daemon that determines access rights to files based on attributes of the process and file. It can be used to either blacklist or whitelist processes or file access. Proceed with caution with enforcing the use of this daemon. Improper configuration may render the system non-functional. The "fapolicyd" API is not namespace aware and can cause issues when launching or running containers. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000368-GPOS-00154, SRG-OS-000370-GPOS-00155, SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00232
SRG-OS-000378-GPOS-00163
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must have the USBGuard installed.
Medium Severity
Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Peripherals include, but are not limited to, such devices as flash drives, external storage, and printers. A new feature that RHEL 8 provides is the USBGuard software framework. The USBguard-daemon is the main component of the USBGuard software framework. It runs as a service in the background and enforces the USB device authorization policy for all USB devices. The policy is defined by a set of rules using a rule language described in the usbguard-rules.conf file. The policy and the authorization state of USB devices can be modified during runtime using the usbguard tool. The System Administrator (SA) must work with the site Information System Security Officer (ISSO) to determine a list of authorized peripherals and establish rules within the USBGuard software framework to allow only authorized devices.
SRG-OS-000378-GPOS-00163
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable the USBGuard.
Medium Severity
Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Peripherals include, but are not limited to, such devices as flash drives, external storage, and printers. A new feature that RHEL 8 provides is the USBGuard software framework. The USBguard-daemon is the main component of the USBGuard software framework. It runs as a service in the background and enforces the USB device authorization policy for all USB devices. The policy is defined by a set of rules using a rule language described in the usbguard-rules.conf file. The policy and the authorization state of USB devices can be modified during runtime using the usbguard tool. The System Administrator (SA) must work with the site Information System Security Officer (ISSO) to determine a list of authorized peripherals and establish rules within the USBGuard software framework to allow only authorized devices.
SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187
1 Rule
All RHEL 8 networked systems must have SSH installed.
Medium Severity
Without protection of the transmitted information, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised because unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read or altered. This requirement applies to both internal and external networks and all types of information system components from which information can be transmitted (e.g., servers, mobile devices, notebook computers, printers, copiers, scanners, and facsimile machines). Communication paths outside the physical protection of a controlled boundary are exposed to the possibility of interception and modification. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of organizational information can be accomplished by physical means (e.g., employing physical distribution systems) or by logical means (e.g., employing cryptographic techniques). If physical means of protection are employed, then logical means (cryptography) do not have to be employed, and vice versa. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000423-GPOS-00187, SRG-OS-000424-GPOS-00188, SRG-OS-000425-GPOS-00189, SRG-OS-000426-GPOS-00190
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent IPv4 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages from being accepted.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages modify the host's route table and are unauthenticated. An illicit ICMP redirect message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not forward IPv4 source-routed packets.
Medium Severity
Source-routed packets allow the source of the packet to suggest that routers forward the packet along a different path than configured on the router, which can be used to bypass network security measures. This requirement applies only to the forwarding of source-routed traffic, such as when forwarding is enabled and the system is functioning as a router. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not forward IPv4 source-routed packets by default.
Medium Severity
Source-routed packets allow the source of the packet to suggest that routers forward the packet along a different path than configured on the router, which can be used to bypass network security measures. This requirement applies only to the forwarding of source-routed traffic, such as when forwarding is enabled and the system is functioning as a router. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ignore IPv4 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages.
Medium Severity
ICMP redirect messages are used by routers to inform hosts that a more direct route exists for a particular destination. These messages modify the host's route table and are unauthenticated. An illicit ICMP redirect message could result in a man-in-the-middle attack. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must enable hardening for the Berkeley Packet Filter Just-in-time compiler.
Medium Severity
It is detrimental for operating systems to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and therefore may remain unsecured. They increase the risk to the platform by providing additional attack vectors. Enabling hardening for the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) Just-in-time (JIT) compiler aids in mitigating JIT spraying attacks. Setting the value to "2" enables JIT hardening for all users. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 systems, versions 8.2 and above, must configure SELinux context type to allow the use of a non-default faillock tally directory.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. From "faillock.conf" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be re-enabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable, a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. SELinux, enforcing a targeted policy, will require any non-default tally directory's security context type to match the default directory's security context type. Without updating the security context type, the pam_faillock module will not write failed login attempts to the non-default tally directory.
SRG-OS-000021-GPOS-00005
1 Rule
RHEL 8 systems below version 8.2 must configure SELinux context type to allow the use of a non-default faillock tally directory.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed logon attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-force attacks, is reduced. Limits are imposed by locking the account. From "Pam_Faillock" man pages: Note that the default directory that "pam_faillock" uses is usually cleared on system boot so the access will be reenabled after system reboot. If that is undesirable, a different tally directory must be set with the "dir" option. SELinux, enforcing a targeted policy, will require any non-default tally directory's security context type to match the default directory's security context type. Without updating the security context type, the pam_faillock module will not write failed login attempts to the non-default tally directory.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not enable IPv4 packet forwarding unless the system is a router.
Medium Severity
Routing protocol daemons are typically used on routers to exchange network topology information with other routers. If this software is used when not required, system network information may be unnecessarily transmitted across the network. The sysctl --system command will load settings from all system configuration files. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same option, the entry in the file with the lexicographically latest name will take precedence. Files are read from directories in the following list from top to bottom. Once a file of a given filename is loaded, any file of the same name in subsequent directories is ignored. /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /run/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /lib/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must not have accounts configured with blank or null passwords.
High Severity
If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library directories must have mode 755 or less permissive.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library directories must be owned by root.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100
1 Rule
RHEL 8 library directories must be group-owned by root or a system account.
Medium Severity
If RHEL 8 were to allow any user to make changes to software libraries, then those changes might be implemented without undergoing the appropriate testing and approvals that are part of a robust change management process. This requirement applies to RHEL 8 with software libraries that are accessible and configurable, as in the case of interpreted languages. Software libraries also include privileged programs that execute with escalated privileges. Only qualified and authorized individuals will be allowed to obtain access to information system components for purposes of initiating changes, including upgrades and modifications.
SRG-OS-000445-GPOS-00199
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must use a file integrity tool to verify correct operation of all security functions.
Medium Severity
Without verification of the security functions, security functions may not operate correctly, and the failure may go unnoticed. Security function is defined as the hardware, software, and/or firmware of the information system responsible for enforcing the system security policy and supporting the isolation of code and data on which the protection is based. Security functionality includes, but is not limited to, establishing system accounts, configuring access authorizations (i.e., permissions, privileges), setting events to be audited, and setting intrusion detection parameters. This requirement applies to the RHEL 8 operating system performing security function verification/testing and/or systems and environments that require this functionality.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must specify the default "include" directory for the /etc/sudoers file.
Medium Severity
The "sudo" command allows authorized users to run programs (including shells) as other users, system users, and root. The "/etc/sudoers" file is used to configure authorized "sudo" users as well as the programs they are allowed to run. Some configuration options in the "/etc/sudoers" file allow configured users to run programs without re-authenticating. Use of these configuration options makes it easier for one compromised account to be used to compromise other accounts. It is possible to include other sudoers files from within the sudoers file currently being parsed using the #include and #includedir directives. When sudo reaches this line it will suspend processing of the current file (/etc/sudoers) and switch to the specified file/directory. Once the end of the included file(s) is reached, the rest of /etc/sudoers will be processed. Files that are included may themselves include other files. A hard limit of 128 nested include files is enforced to prevent include file loops.
SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156
1 Rule
The RHEL 8 operating system must not be configured to bypass password requirements for privilege escalation.
Medium Severity
Without re-authentication, users may access resources or perform tasks for which they do not have authorization. When operating systems provide the capability to escalate a functional capability, it is critical the user re-authenticate. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00157, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00158
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure the password complexity module is enabled in the system-auth file.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 systems below version 8.4 must ensure the password complexity module in the system-auth file is configured for three retries or less.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth By limiting the number of attempts to meet the pwquality module complexity requirements before returning with an error, the system will audit abnormal attempts at password changes.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 systems below version 8.4 must ensure the password complexity module in the password-auth file is configured for three retries or less.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 uses "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth By limiting the number of attempts to meet the pwquality module complexity requirements before returning with an error, the system will audit abnormal attempts at password changes.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 systems, version 8.4 and above, must ensure the password complexity module is configured for three retries or less.
Medium Severity
Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. "pwquality" enforces complex password construction configuration and has the ability to limit brute-force attacks on the system. RHEL 8 utilizes "pwquality" as a mechanism to enforce password complexity. This is set in both: /etc/pam.d/password-auth /etc/pam.d/system-auth By limiting the number of attempts to meet the pwquality module complexity requirements before returning with an error, the system will audit abnormal attempts at password changes.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
The graphical display manager must not be the default target on RHEL 8 unless approved.
Medium Severity
Internet services that are not required for system or application processes must not be active to decrease the attack surface of the system. Graphical display managers have a long history of security vulnerabilities and must not be used, unless approved and documented.
SRG-OS-000324-GPOS-00125
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must prevent nonprivileged users from executing privileged functions, including disabling, circumventing, or altering implemented security safeguards/countermeasures.
Medium Severity
Preventing nonprivileged users from executing privileged functions mitigates the risk that unauthorized individuals or processes may gain unnecessary access to information or privileges. Privileged functions include, for example, establishing accounts, performing system integrity checks, or administering cryptographic key management activities. Nonprivileged users are individuals who do not possess appropriate authorizations. Circumventing intrusion detection and prevention mechanisms or malicious code protection mechanisms are examples of privileged functions that require protection from nonprivileged users.
SRG-OS-000250-GPOS-00093
1 Rule
RHEL 8 SSH server must be configured to use only FIPS-validated key exchange algorithms.
Medium Severity
Without cryptographic integrity protections provided by FIPS-validated cryptographic algorithms, information can be viewed and altered by unauthorized users without detection. RHEL 8 incorporates system-wide crypto policies by default. The SSH configuration file has no effect on the ciphers, MACs, or algorithms unless specifically defined in the /etc/sysconfig/sshd file. The employed algorithms can be viewed in the /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/opensshserver.config file. The system will attempt to use the first algorithm presented by the client that matches the server list. Listing the values "strongest to weakest" is a method to ensure the use of the strongest algorithm available to secure the SSH connection.
SRG-OS-000366-GPOS-00153
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must ensure cryptographic verification of vendor software packages.
Medium Severity
Cryptographic verification of vendor software packages ensures that all software packages are obtained from a valid source and protects against spoofing that could lead to installation of malware on the system. Red Hat cryptographically signs all software packages, which includes updates, with a GPG key to verify that they are valid.
SRG-OS-000363-GPOS-00150
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must be configured to allow sending email notifications of unauthorized configuration changes to designated personnel.
Medium Severity
Unauthorized changes to the baseline configuration could make the system vulnerable to various attacks or allow unauthorized access to the operating system. Changes to operating system configurations can have unintended side effects, some of which may be relevant to security. Detecting such changes and providing an automated response can help avoid unintended, negative consequences that could ultimately affect the security state of the operating system. The operating system's IMO/ISSO and SAs must be notified via email and/or monitoring system trap when there is an unauthorized modification of a configuration item.
SRG-OS-000163-GPOS-00072
1 Rule
RHEL 8.7 and higher must terminate idle user sessions.
Medium Severity
Terminating an idle session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended.
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
1 Rule
RHEL 8 must not allow blank or null passwords in the system-auth file.
High Severity
If an account has an empty password, anyone could log on and run commands with the privileges of that account. Accounts with empty passwords should never be used in operational environments.