STIGUI
V-274877CAT II — Medium severitySV-274877r1155381_rule

RHEL 8 must audit any script or executable called by cron as root or by any privileged user.

Rule version RHEL-08-030655 · STIG v2 · 2026-05-20

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 set to 755 or more restrictive, and have no extended rights that allow a nonprivileged user to modify the script or executable.

Check

Verify RHEL 8 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 RHEL 8 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": -w /etc/cron.d/ -p wa -k cronjobs -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-274877
Group title
SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215
Rule ID
SV-274877r1155381_rule
Check ID
C-78978r1106147_chk
Fix ID
F-78883r1155380_fix