STIGUI
V-274859CAT II — Medium severitySV-274859r1101698_rule

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS must require users to provide a password for privilege escalation.

Rule version UBTU-20-010015 · STIG v2 · 2025-05-16

Discussion

Without reauthentication, users may access resources or perform tasks for which they do not have authorization.

When operating systems provide the capability to escalate a functional capability, it is critical that the user reauthenticate.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00157, SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00158

Check

Verify that "/etc/sudoers" has no occurrences of "NOPASSWD" with the following command:

$ sudo egrep -iR 'NOPASSWD' /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d/

If any occurrences of "NOPASSWD" are returned from the command and have not been documented with the information system security officer (ISSO) as an organizationally defined administrative group using multifactor authentication (MFA), this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the operating system to not allow users to execute privileged actions without authenticating with a password.

Remove any occurrence of "NOPASSWD" found in "/etc/sudoers" file or files in the "/etc/sudoers.d" directory.

$ sudo find /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d -type f -exec sed -i '/NOPASSWD/ s/^/# /g' {} \;

Identifiers

Group ID
V-274859
Group title
SRG-OS-000373-GPOS-00156
Rule ID
SV-274859r1101698_rule
Check ID
C-78960r1101696_chk
Fix ID
F-78865r1101697_fix