Vulnerability Discussion

It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without this notification, the security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected.

Audit processing failures include software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded.

This requirement applies to each audit data storage repository (i.e., distinct information system component where audit records are stored), the centralized audit storage capacity of organizations (i.e., all audit data storage repositories combined), or both.

Check

Verify that the SA and ISSO (at a minimum) are notified in the event of an audit processing failure with the following command:

$ sudo grep '^action_mail_acct = root' /etc/audit/auditd.conf

action_mail_acct =

If the value of the "action_mail_acct" keyword is not set to an accounts for security personnel, the "action_mail_acct" keyword is missing, or the returned line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure "auditd" service to notify the SA and ISSO in the event of an audit processing failure.

Edit the following line in "/etc/audit/auditd.conf" to ensure administrators are notified via email for those situations:

action_mail_acct =

Note: Change "administrator_account" to an account for security personnel.

Restart the "auditd" service so the changes take effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart auditd.service