Vulnerability Discussion

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.

Check

Verify that Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment (AIDE) is properly configured to use cryptographic mechanisms to protect the integrity of audit tools.

If AIDE is not installed, ask the System Administrator how file integrity checks are performed on the system.

Check the selection lines to ensure AIDE is configured to add/check with the following command:

$ sudo egrep '(\/usr\/sbin\/(audit|au))' /etc/aide.conf

/usr/sbin/auditctl p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/auditd p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/ausearch p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/aureport p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/autrace p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/rsyslogd p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/augenrules p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512

If any of the audit tools listed above do not have an appropriate selection line, ask the system administrator to indicate what cryptographic mechanisms are being used to protect the integrity of the audit tools. If there is no evidence of integrity protection, this is a finding.

Fix

Add or update the following lines to "/etc/aide.conf", to protect the integrity of the audit tools.

# Audit Tools
/usr/sbin/auditctl p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/auditd p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/ausearch p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/aureport p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/autrace p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/rsyslogd p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512
/usr/sbin/augenrules p+i+n+u+g+s+b+acl+xattrs+sha512