RHEL 9 /etc/audit/auditd.conf file must have 0640 or less permissive to prevent unauthorized access.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-258172	SRG-OS-000063-GPOS-00032	RHEL-09-653115	SV-258172r958444_rule	2025-02-27	2

Description
Without the capability to restrict the roles and individuals that can select which events are audited, unauthorized personnel may be able to prevent the auditing of critical events. Misconfigured audits may degrade the system's performance by overwhelming the audit log. Misconfigured audits may also make it more difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.

Description

Without the capability to restrict the roles and individuals that can select which events are audited, unauthorized personnel may be able to prevent the auditing of critical events. Misconfigured audits may degrade the system's performance by overwhelming the audit log. Misconfigured audits may also make it more difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.

ℹ️ Check
Verify the mode of /etc/audit/auditd.conf with the command: $ sudo stat -c "%a %n" /etc/audit/auditd.conf 640 /etc/audit/auditd.conf If "/etc/audit/auditd.conf" does not have a mode of "0640", this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Set the mode of /etc/audit/auditd.conf file to 0640 with the command: $ sudo chmod 0640 /etc/audit/auditd.conf