STIGUI
V-257926CAT II — Medium severitySV-257926r1268251_rule

RHEL 9 cron configuration files directory must be owned by root.

Rule version RHEL-09-232230 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

Service configuration files enable or disable features of their respective services that if configured incorrectly can lead to insecure and vulnerable configurations; therefore, service configuration files must be owned by the correct group to prevent unauthorized changes.

Check

Verify the ownership of all cron configuration files with the command:

$ stat -c "%U %n" /etc/cron*

root /etc/cron.d root /etc/cron.daily root /etc/cron.deny root /etc/cron.hourly root /etc/cron.monthly root /etc/crontab root /etc/cron.weekly

If any crontab is not owned by root, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure any cron configuration not owned by root with the following command:

$ sudo chown root [cron config file]

Identifiers

Group ID
V-257926
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-257926r1268251_rule
Check ID
C-61667r925763_chk
Fix ID
F-61591r925764_fix