STIGUI
V-258211CAT II — Medium severitySV-258211r1045418_rule

Successful/unsuccessful uses of the init command in RHEL 9 must generate an audit record.

Rule version RHEL-09-654185 · STIG v2 · 2026-09-17

Discussion

Misuse of the init command may cause availability issues for the system.

Check

Verify that RHEL 9 is configured to audit the execution of the "init" command with the following command:

$ sudo auditctl -l | grep /usr/sbin/init

-a always,exit -S all -F path=/usr/sbin/init -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=-1 -F key=privileged-init

If the command does not return a line, or the line is commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the audit system to generate an audit event for any successful/unsuccessful uses of the "init" command by adding or updating the following rule in the "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules" file:

-a always,exit -F path=/usr/sbin/init -F perm=x -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k privileged-init

To load the rules to the kernel immediately, use the following command:

$ sudo augenrules --load

Identifiers

Group ID
V-258211
Group title
SRG-OS-000477-GPOS-00222
Rule ID
SV-258211r1045418_rule
Check ID
C-61952r1045416_chk
Fix ID
F-61876r1045417_fix