STIGUI
V-260603CAT II — Medium severitySV-260603r958444_rule

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS must permit only authorized groups to own the audit configuration files.

Rule version UBTU-22-653075 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-09

Discussion

Without the capability to restrict which roles and individuals can select which events are audited, unauthorized personnel may be able to prevent the auditing of critical events.

Misconfigured audits may degrade the system's performance by overwhelming the audit log. Misconfigured audits may also make it more difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.

Check

Verify that "/etc/audit/audit.rules", "/etc/audit/auditd.conf", and "/etc/audit/rules.d/*" files are owned by root group by using the following command:

     $ sudo ls -al /etc/audit/audit.rules /etc/audit/auditd.conf /etc/audit/rules.d/* | awk '{print $4, $9}'  
     root /etc/audit/audit.rules 
     root /etc/audit/auditd.conf 
     root /etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules 

If "/etc/audit/audit.rules", "/etc/audit/auditd.conf", or "/etc/audit/rules.d/*" files are owned by a group other than "root", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure "/etc/audit/audit.rules", "/etc/audit/rules.d/*", and "/etc/audit/auditd.conf" files to be owned by root group by using the following command:

     $ sudo chown -R :root /etc/audit/audit.rules /etc/audit/auditd.conf /etc/audit/rules.d/*

Identifiers

Group ID
V-260603
Group title
SRG-OS-000063-GPOS-00032
Rule ID
SV-260603r958444_rule
Check ID
C-64332r953620_chk
Fix ID
F-64240r953621_fix