SV-257788r1044838: RHEL 9 must disable the ability of systemd to spawn an interactive boot process. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

RHEL 9 must disable the ability of systemd to spawn an interactive boot process.

Description

Discussion Text

Using interactive or recovery boot, the console user could disable auditing, firewalls, or other services, weakening system security.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000366

References

DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 DISA DPMS Target Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 5551

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.stig.rhel9os:def:257788
# RHEL 9 must disable the ability of systemd to spawn an interactive boot process.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  (grep -rhP --include='*.conf' '^options\s+(.*)$' '/boot/loader/entries' | sed -En 's/^options\s+(.*)$/\1/p') | grep -Pq '(^|\s)systemd\.confirm_spawn(\s|$)'
}
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_2() {
  (sed -En 's/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="(.*)"/\1/p' '/etc/default/grub') | grep -Pq '(^|\s)systemd\.confirm_spawn(\s|$)'
}

if ( test_1 && test_2 ); 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:mil.disa.stig.rhel9os:def:257788

if ! grep -qE "(^|\\s)systemd\\.confirm_spawn(\\s|$)" /boot/loader/entries/*.conf && ! grep -qE "(^|\\s)systemd\\.confirm_spawn(\\s|$)" /etc/default/grub; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
else
    echo "FAIL"
    exit 1
fi

Remediation

Configure the current GRUB 2 configuration to disable the ability of systemd to spawn an interactive boot process with the following command:

$ sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --remove-args="systemd.confirm_spawn"