Vulnerability Discussion

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

Check

Verify the operating system authenticates the remote logging server for off-loading audit logs with the following command:

$ sudo grep -i '$ActionSendStreamDriverAuthMode' /etc/rsyslog.conf /etc/rsyslog.d/*.conf

/etc/rsyslog.conf:$ActionSendStreamDriverAuthMode x509/name

If the value of the "$ActionSendStreamDriverAuthMode" option is not set to "x509/name" or the line is commented out, ask the System Administrator to indicate how the audit logs are off-loaded to a different system or media.

If there is no evidence that the transfer of the audit logs being off-loaded to another system or media is encrypted, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the operating system to authenticate the remote logging server for off-loading audit logs by setting the following option in "/etc/rsyslog.conf" or "/etc/rsyslog.d/[customfile].conf":

$ActionSendStreamDriverAuthMode x509/name