STIGUI
V-277180CAT II — Medium severitySV-277180r1268251_rule

The macOS system must enable Recovery Lock.

Rule version APPL-26-005120 · STIG v1 · 2026-09-01

Discussion

A Recovery Lock password must be enabled and set.

Single user mode, recovery mode, the Startup Manager, and several other tools are available on macOS by holding down specific key combinations during startup. Setting a recovery lock restricts access to these tools.

IMPORTANT: Recovery lock passwords are not supported on Intel devices. This rule is only applicable to Apple Silicon devices.

Check

For non-Apple Silicon systems, this is not applicable.

Verify the macOS system is configured with Recovery Lock with the following command:

/usr/libexec/mdmclient QuerySecurityInfo 2>/dev/null | /usr/bin/grep -c "IsRecoveryLockEnabled = 1"

If the result is not "1", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the macOS system with Recovery Lock with the SetRecoveryLock command. This can be used to set a Recovery Lock password and must be from the MDM.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-277180
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-277180r1268251_rule
Check ID
C-81335r1149337_chk
Fix ID
F-81240r1148991_fix