STIGUI
V-230473CAT II — Medium severitySV-230473r1017264_rule

RHEL 8 audit tools must be owned by root.

Rule version RHEL-08-030630 · STIG v2 · 2026-05-20

Discussion

Protecting audit information also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit information.

RHEL 8 systems providing tools to interface with audit information will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the tools, and the corresponding rights the user enjoys, to make access decisions regarding the access to audit tools.

Audit tools include, but are not limited to, vendor-provided and open source audit tools needed to successfully view and manipulate audit information system activity and records. Audit tools include custom queries and report generators.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098, SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099

Check

Verify the audit tools are owned by "root" to prevent any unauthorized access, deletion, or modification.

Check the owner of each audit tool by running the following command:

$ sudo stat -c "%U %n" /sbin/auditctl /sbin/aureport /sbin/ausearch /sbin/autrace /sbin/auditd /sbin/rsyslogd /sbin/augenrules

root /sbin/auditctl root /sbin/aureport root /sbin/ausearch root /sbin/autrace root /sbin/auditd root /sbin/rsyslogd root /sbin/augenrules

If any of the audit tools are not owned by "root", this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the audit tools to be owned by "root", by running the following command:

$ sudo chown root [audit_tool]

Replace "[audit_tool]" with each audit tool not owned by "root".

Identifiers

Group ID
V-230473
Group title
SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097
Rule ID
SV-230473r1017264_rule
Check ID
C-33142r744007_chk
Fix ID
F-33117r568166_fix