Vulnerability Discussion

Audit log files must be owned by root.

The audit service must be configured to create log files with the correct ownership to prevent normal users from reading audit logs.

Audit logs contain sensitive data about the system and users. If log files are set to only be readable and writable by system administrators, the risk is mitigated.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027,SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028,SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029,SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097,SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098,SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099

Check

Verify the macOS system is configured with audit log files owned by root with the following command:

/bin/ls -n $(/usr/bin/grep '^dir' /etc/security/audit_control | /usr/bin/awk -F: '{print $2}') | /usr/bin/awk '{s+=$3} END {print s}'

If the result is not "0", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the macOS system with audit log files owned by root with the following command:

/usr/sbin/chown -R root /var/audit/*