SV-258152r1015127: RHEL 9 audit service must be enabled. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 STIG SCAP Benchmark

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Assessment Title

Rule Text

RHEL 9 audit service must be enabled.

Description

Discussion Text

Without establishing what type of events occurred, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. Ensuring the "auditd" service is active ensures audit records generated by the kernel are appropriately recorded. Additionally, a properly configured audit subsystem ensures that actions of individual system users can be uniquely traced to those users so they can be held accountable for their actions. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000038-GPOS-00016, SRG-OS-000039-GPOS-00017, SRG-OS-000040-GPOS-00018, SRG-OS-000041-GPOS-00019, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00021, SRG-OS-000051-GPOS-00024, SRG-OS-000054-GPOS-00025, SRG-OS-000122-GPOS-00063, SRG-OS-000254-GPOS-00095, SRG-OS-000255-GPOS-00096, SRG-OS-000337-GPOS-00129, SRG-OS-000348-GPOS-00136, SRG-OS-000349-GPOS-00137, SRG-OS-000350-GPOS-00138, SRG-OS-000351-GPOS-00139, SRG-OS-000352-GPOS-00140, SRG-OS-000353-GPOS-00141, SRG-OS-000354-GPOS-00142, SRG-OS-000358-GPOS-00145, SRG-OS-000365-GPOS-00152, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000475-GPOS-00220

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

IA Controls

NIST SP 800-53

Not mappedCCI-000130Not mappedCCI-000131Not mappedCCI-000132Not mappedCCI-000133Not mappedCCI-000134Not mappedCCI-000135Not mappedCCI-000154Not mappedCCI-000158Not mappedCCI-000169Not mappedCCI-000172Not mappedCCI-001464Not mappedCCI-001487Not mappedCCI-003938Not mappedCCI-001875Not mappedCCI-001876Not mappedCCI-001877Not mappedCCI-001878Not mappedCCI-001879Not mappedCCI-001880Not mappedCCI-001881Not mappedCCI-001882Not mappedCCI-001889Not mappedCCI-001914Not mappedCCI-002884Not mappedCCI-004188Not mappedCCI-001814

References

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

Checks

DISA STIG (Manual Reference)

Verify the audit service is configured to produce audit records with the following command:

$ systemctl status auditd.service

auditd.service - Security Auditing Service
Loaded:loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/auditd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tues 2022-05-24 12:56:56 EST; 4 weeks 0 days ago

If the audit service is not "active" and "running", 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:258152
# RHEL 9 audit service must be enabled.
# Per-module read mechanism curated from static teardown of DISA's SCC tool
# (SCAP Compliance Checker) -- see the SCC Automation Reference above.

# auditd is active
# systemdunitproperty_object (systemdunitproperty_test)
test_1() {
  (systemctl show -p 'ActiveState' --value 'auditd.service') | grep -qxF 'active'
}
# auditd is running
# systemdunitproperty_object (systemdunitproperty_test)
test_2() {
  (systemctl show -p 'SubState' --value 'auditd.service') | grep -qxF 'running'
}

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 Definition: oval:mil.disa.stig.rhel9os:def:258152

if ! command -v systemctl &> /dev/null
then
    echo "FAIL"
    exit 1
fi

if systemctl is-active --quiet auditd.service && systemctl is-enabled --quiet auditd.service
then
    echo "PASS"
    exit 0
else
    echo "FAIL"
    exit 1
fi

Remediation

To enable the auditd service run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl enable --now auditd