STIGUI
V-215270CAT II — Medium severitySV-215270r1268251_rule

AIX cron and crontab directories must be owned by root or bin.

Rule version AIX7-00-002078 · STIG v3 · 2026-08-31

Discussion

Incorrect ownership of the cron or crontab directories could permit unauthorized users the ability to alter cron jobs and run automated jobs as privileged users. Failure to give ownership of cron or crontab directories to root or to bin provides the designated owner and unauthorized users with the potential to access sensitive information or change the system configuration which could weaken the system's security posture.

Check

Check the owner of the "crontab" directory using command:

# ls -ld /var/spool/cron/crontabs drwxrwx--- 2 bin cron 256 Jan 25 12:33 /var/spool/cron/crontabs

If the owner of the "crontab" directory is not "root" or "bin", this is a finding.

Fix

Change the owner of the "crontab" directory: # chown root /var/spool/cron/crontabs

Identifiers

Group ID
V-215270
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-215270r1268251_rule
Check ID
C-16468r294261_chk
Fix ID
F-16466r294262_fix