STIGUI
V-271723CAT II — Medium severitySV-271723r1091881_rule

OL 9 must restrict the use of the su command.

Rule version OL09-00-002361 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-21

Discussion

The su program allows to run commands with a substitute user and group ID. It is commonly used to run commands as the root user. Limiting access to such commands is considered a good security practice.

Check

Verify that OL 9 requires uses to be members of the "wheel" group with the following command:

$ grep pam_wheel /etc/pam.d/su auth required pam_wheel.so use_uid

If a line for "pam_wheel.so" does not exist, or is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure OL 9 to require users to be in the "wheel" group to run su command.

In file "/etc/pam.d/su", uncomment the following line:

"#auth required pam_wheel.so use_uid"

Or use the following command to update /etc/pam.d/su

$ sed '/^[[:space:]]*#[[:space:]]*auth[[:space:]]\+required[[:space:]]\+pam_wheel\.so[[:space:]]\+use_uid$/s/^[[:space:]]*#//' -i /etc/pam.d/su

If necessary, create a "wheel" group and add administrative users to the group.

$ grep wheel /etc/group

Identifiers

Group ID
V-271723
Group title
SRG-OS-000312-GPOS-00123
Rule ID
SV-271723r1091881_rule
Check ID
C-75773r1091879_chk
Fix ID
F-75680r1091880_fix