SV-258049r1015092: RHEL 9 must disable account identifiers (individuals, groups, roles, and devices) after 35 days of inactivity. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

RHEL 9 must disable account identifiers (individuals, groups, roles, and devices) after 35 days of inactivity.

Description

Discussion Text

Inactive identifiers pose a risk to systems and applications because attackers may exploit an inactive identifier and potentially obtain undetected access to the system. Disabling inactive accounts ensures that accounts which may not have been responsibly removed are not available to attackers who may have compromised their credentials. Owners of inactive accounts will not notice if unauthorized access to their user account has been obtained.

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-003627Not mappedCCI-003628Not mappedCCI-000795

References

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

Checks

DISA STIG (Manual Reference)

Verify that RHEL 9 account identifiers (individuals, groups, roles, and devices) are disabled after 35 days of inactivity with the following command:

Check the account inactivity value by performing the following command:

$ sudo grep -i inactive /etc/default/useradd

INACTIVE=35

If "INACTIVE" is set to "-1", a value greater than "35", or is commented out, this is a finding.

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:258049
# RHEL 9 must disable account identifiers (individuals, groups, roles, and devices) after 35 days of inactivity.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# /etc/default/useradd: INACTIVE is set to 35 or less, but not -1
# textfilecontent54_object (textfilecontent54_test)
test_1() {
  ( [ "$(sed -En 's/(?i)^\s*INACTIVE\s*=\s*(-?\d+)\s*$/\1/p' '/etc/default/useradd')" -ge 0 ] ) && ( [ "$(sed -En 's/(?i)^\s*INACTIVE\s*=\s*(-?\d+)\s*$/\1/p' '/etc/default/useradd')" -le 35 ] )
}

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.stig.rhel9os:def:258049


INACTIVE_FILE="/etc/default/useradd"
INACTIVE_PATTERN="(?i)^\\s*INACTIVE\\s*=\\s*(-?\\d+)\\s*$"

if [ ! -f "$INACTIVE_FILE" ]; then
  echo "PASS"
  exit 0
fi

INACTIVE_VALUE=$(grep "$INACTIVE_PATTERN" "$INACTIVE_FILE" | sed -r's/.*INACTIVE *= *(-?[0-9]+).*/\1/')

if [ "$INACTIVE_VALUE" ]; then
  if [ "$INACTIVE_VALUE" -ge 0 ] && [ "$INACTIVE_VALUE" -le 35 ]; then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
  fi
fi

echo "FAIL"
exit 1

Remediation

Configure RHEL 9 to disable account identifiers after 35 days of inactivity after the password expiration. 

Run the following command to change the configuration for useradd:

$ sudo useradd -D -f 35

The recommendation is 35 days, but a lower value is acceptable.