STIGUI
V-257789CAT I — High severitySV-257789r1268226_rule

RHEL 9 must require a unique superusers name upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.

Rule version RHEL-09-212020 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

Having a nondefault grub superuser username makes password-guessing attacks less effective.

Check

Verify the RHEL 9 boot loader superuser account has been set with the following command:

$ sudo grep -A1 "superusers" /etc/grub2.cfg 

set superusers="<accountname>" export superusers password_pbkdf2 <accountname> ${GRUB2_PASSWORD}

Verify <accountname> is not a common name such as root, admin, or administrator.

If superusers contains easily guessable usernames, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure RHEL 9 to have a unique username for the grub superuser account.

Edit the "/etc/grub.d/01_users" file and add or modify the following lines with a nondefault username for the superuser account:

set superusers="<accountname>" export superusers

Once the superuser account has been added, update the grub.cfg file by running:

In RHEL 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2: sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

In RHEL 9.3 and later: sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg --update-bls-cmdline

Identifiers

Group ID
V-257789
Group title
SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048
Rule ID
SV-257789r1268226_rule
Check ID
C-61530r1134893_chk
Fix ID
F-61454r1134894_fix