STIGUI
V-248542CAT II — Medium severitySV-248542r1137691_rule

OL 8 operating systems must require authentication upon booting into emergency mode.

Rule version OL08-00-010152 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-24

Discussion

If the system does not require valid root authentication before it boots into emergency or rescue mode, anyone who invokes emergency or rescue mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system.

Check

Determine if the system requires authentication for emergency mode with the following command:

$ sudo grep sulogin-shell /usr/lib/systemd/system/emergency.service 

ExecStart=-/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sulogin-shell emergency

If the "ExecStart" line is configured for anything other than "/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sulogin-shell emergency" or is commented out or missing, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the system to require authentication upon booting into emergency mode by adding the following line to the "/usr/lib/systemd/system/emergency.service" file:

ExecStart=-/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sulogin-shell emergency

Identifiers

Group ID
V-248542
Group title
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
Rule ID
SV-248542r1137691_rule
Check ID
C-51976r779190_chk
Fix ID
F-51930r779191_fix