SV-37181r1: The system must not have special privilege accounts, such as shutdown and halt. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Security Technical Implementation Guide

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

The system must not have special privilege accounts, such as shutdown and halt.

Description

Discussion Text

If special privilege accounts are compromised, the accounts could provide privileges to execute malicious commands on a system.

How this relates to the STIG checklist: STIG vs SCAP benchmark.

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000225Not mappedCCI-000764

Additional Details

Responsibility

System Administrator

IA Controls

IAAC-1

References

DPMS Target Red Hat 5 DISA DPMS Target Red Hat 5 2154

SCC Automation Reference

The reconstructed evaluation script behind this rule's OVAL check(s) — every module a compound check combines, with this rule's own concrete values and DISA's SCC tool's real per-module mechanism curated from static teardown of SCC releases.

#!/bin/bash
# Reconstructed from oval:mil.disa.fso.rhel11:def:11
# The system must not have special privilege accounts, such as shutdown and halt.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# check for unnecessary privileged accounts in password
# password_object (password_test)
test_1() {
  ! ( getent passwd ^(halt|shutdown|reboot|who)$ &>/dev/null )
}

if test_1; then
  echo "PASS"
else
  echo "FAIL"
fi

Assessment Script Powered by AISandbox-executed

A standalone Shell script to assess this control automatically. Review before running it in your environment.

Syntax-checked and actually executed in an isolated sandbox (not the real system this checks) — confirmed to run without errors.

#!/bin/sh
# OVAL Definition: oval:mil.disa.fso.rhel11:def:11
if [ ! -s /etc/passwd ]; then echo "PASS"; exit 0; fi
for user in halt shutdown reboot who; do if grep -q "^$user:" /etc/passwd; then echo "FAIL"; exit 1; fi; done
echo "PASS"; exit 0

Remediation

Remove any special privilege accounts, such as shutdown and halt, from the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files using the "userdel" or "system-config-users" commands.