STIGUI
V-278952CAT II — Medium severitySV-278952r1135407_rule

OL 9 must audit any script or executable called by cron as root or by any privileged user.

Rule version OL09-00-002584 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-21

Discussion

Any script or executable called by cron as root or by any privileged user must be owned by that user, must have the permissions 0755 or more restrictive, and should have no extended rights that allow any nonprivileged user to modify the script or executable.

Check

Verify that OL 9 is configured to audit the execution of any system call made by cron as root or as any privileged user.

$ sudo auditctl -l | grep /etc/cron.d -w /etc/cron.d -p wa -k cronjobs

$ sudo auditctl -l | grep /var/spool/cron -w /var/spool/cron -p wa -k cronjobs

If either of these commands do not return the expected output, or the lines are commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure OL 9 to audit the execution of any system call made by cron as root or as any privileged user.

Add or update the following file system rules to "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules":

auditctl -w /etc/cron.d/ -p wa -k cronjobs auditctl -w /var/spool/cron/ -p wa -k cronjobs

To load the rules to the kernel immediately, use the following command:

$ sudo augenrules --load

Identifiers

Group ID
V-278952
Group title
SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015
Rule ID
SV-278952r1135407_rule
Check ID
C-83486r1135404_chk
Fix ID
F-83391r1135405_fix