STIGUI
V-230404CAT II — Medium severitySV-230404r1017210_rule

RHEL 8 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/shadow.

Rule version RHEL-08-030130 · STIG v2 · 2026-05-20

Discussion

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).

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004, SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000239-GPOS-00089, SRG-OS-000240-GPOS-00090, SRG-OS-000241-GPOS-00091, SRG-OS-000303-GPOS-00120, SRG-OS-000304-GPOS-00121, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221

Check

Verify RHEL 8 generates audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect "/etc/shadow".

Check the auditing rules in "/etc/audit/audit.rules" with the following command:

$ sudo grep /etc/shadow /etc/audit/audit.rules

-w /etc/shadow -p wa -k identity

If the command does not return a line, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 8 to generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect "/etc/shadow".

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

-w /etc/shadow -p wa -k identity

The audit daemon must be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-230404
Group title
SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031
Rule ID
SV-230404r1017210_rule
Check ID
C-33073r567958_chk
Fix ID
F-33048r567959_fix