RHEL 10 must enforce group ownership of audit logs by "root" or by a restricted logging group to prevent unauthorized read access.

STIG ID: RHEL-10-400165  |  SRG: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027 |  Severity: medium (CAT II)  |  CCI: CCI-000162,CCI-000163,CCI-000164,CCI-001314 |  Vulnerability Id: V-281050

Vulnerability Discussion

Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029, SRG-OS-000206-GPOS-00084

Check

Verify RHEL 10 audit logs are group-owned by "root" or a restricted logging group.

Determine where the audit logs are stored with the following command:

$ sudo grep -iw log_file /etc/audit/auditd.conf
log_file = /var/log/audit/audit.log

Using the location of the audit log file, determine if the audit log is group-owned by "root" using the following command:

$ sudo stat -c "%G %n" /var/log/audit/audit.log
root /var/log/audit/audit.log

If the audit log is not group-owned by "root" or the configured alternative logging group, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 10 to prevent unauthorized read access by ensuring that audit logs are group-owned by root or by a restricted logging group.

Change the group of the directory of "/var/log/audit" to be owned by a correct group.

Identify the group that is configured to own audit logs:

$ sudo grep -P '^[ ]*log_group[ ]+=.*$' /etc/audit/auditd.conf

Change the ownership to that group:

$ sudo chgrp ${GROUP} /var/log/audit