NGINX must allow only the information system security manager (ISSM) (or individuals or roles appointed by the ISSM) to select which auditable events are to be audited.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-278386	SRG-APP-000090	NGNX-APP-000250	SV-278386r1171910_rule	2026-01-07	1

Description
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. The list of audited events is the set of events for which audits are to be generated. This set of events is typically a subset of the list of all events for which the system can generating audit records.

Description

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. The list of audited events is the set of events for which audits are to be generated. This set of events is typically a subset of the list of all events for which the system can generating audit records.

ℹ️ Check
Check the current permissions of nginx.conf: ls -l /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 23 15:04 /etc/nginx/nginx.conf If file has write permissions for anyone other than the owner, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
By default, nginx.conf has file permissions set to admins only. Performing the chmod command will set file permissions on nginx.conf. sudo chmod 600 /etc/nginx/nginx.conf This example command will set read/write permissions for the owner only.