Vulnerability Discussion

Protecting audit information also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit information.

Operating systems providing tools to interface with audit information will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the tools and the corresponding rights the user enjoys in order to make access decisions regarding the access to audit tools.

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.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098

Check

Verify the Ubuntu operating system configures the audit tools to be group-owned by root to prevent any unauthorized access.

Check the group ownership by running the following command:

$ stat -c "%n %G" /sbin/auditctl /sbin/aureport /sbin/ausearch /sbin/autrace /sbin/auditd /sbin/audispd /sbin/augenrules

/sbin/auditctl root
/sbin/aureport root
/sbin/ausearch root
/sbin/autrace root
/sbin/auditd root
/sbin/audispd root
/sbin/augenrules root

If any of the audit tools are not group-owned by root, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the audit tools on the Ubuntu operating system to be protected from unauthorized access by setting the file group as root using the following command:

$ sudo chown :root [audit_tool]

Replace "[audit_tool]" with each audit tool not group-owned by root.