Rule version OL09-00-000696 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-21
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.
Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). The "useradd" command modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line.
When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1". The AUID representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295". The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way.
Satisfies: SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
Verify that OL 9 is configured to audit the execution of the "useradd" command with the following command:
$ sudo auditctl -l | grep useradd
-a always,exit -S all -F path=/usr/sbin/useradd -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=-1 -F key=privileged-useradd
If the command does not return a line, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.
Configure OL 9 to generate audit records upon successful/unsuccessful attempts to use the "useradd " command by adding or updating the following rule in "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules":
-a always,exit -F path=/usr/sbin/useradd -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k privileged-useradd
To load the rules to the kernel immediately, use the following command:
$ sudo augenrules --load