Vulnerability Discussion

RHEL 9 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-000405-GPOS-00184, SRG-OS-000185-GPOS-00079, SRG-OS-000404-GPOS-00183

Check

Verify RHEL 9 prevents unauthorized disclosure or modification of all information requiring at-rest protection by using disk encryption.

Note: If there is a documented and approved reason for not having data-at-rest encryption, this requirement is Not Applicable.

Verify all system partitions are encrypted with the following command:

$ blkid

/dev/map per/rhel-root: UUID="67b7d7fe-de60-6fd0-befb-e6748cf97743" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"

Every persistent disk partition present must be of type "crypto_LUKS". If any partitions other than the boot partition or pseudo file systems (such as /proc or /sys) or temporary file systems (that are tmpfs) are not type "crypto_LUKS", ask the administrator to indicate how the partitions are encrypted. If there is no evidence that these partitions are encrypted, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 9 to prevent unauthorized modification of all information at rest by using disk encryption.

Encrypting a partition in an already installed system is more difficult, because existing partitions will need to be resized and changed.

To encrypt an entire partition, dedicate a partition for encryption in the partition layout.