STIGUI
V-261372CAT II — Medium severitySV-261372r1184420_rule

SLEM 5 must use the invoking user's password for privilege escalation when using "sudo".

Rule version SLEM-05-432010 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

The sudoers security policy requires that users authenticate themselves before they can use sudo. When sudoers requires authentication, it validates the invoking user's credentials. If the rootpw, targetpw, or runaspw flags are defined and not disabled, by default the operating system will prompt the invoking user for the "root" user password.

For more information on each of the listed configurations, reference the sudoers(5) manual page.

Check

Verify that the sudoers security policy is configured to use the invoking user's password for privilege escalation with the following command:

    > sudo egrep -ir '(rootpw|targetpw|runaspw)' /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d* | grep -v '#'
    /etc/sudoers.d/hardening_defaults:Defaults !targetpw
    /etc/sudoers.d/hardening_defaults:Defaults !rootpw
    /etc/sudoers.d/hardening_defaults:Defaults !runaspw

If "Defaults" types are not defined for "!targetpw", "!rootpw", and "!runaspw", there are conflicting results between files, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the sudoers security policy to use the invoking user's password for privilege escalation.

Define the defaults in a configuration file in the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory with the following command and entries:

    > sudo visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/hardening_defaults

Defaults !targetpw Defaults !rootpw Defaults !runaspw

Identifiers

Group ID
V-261372
Group title
SRG-OS-000480-GPOS-00227
Rule ID
SV-261372r1184420_rule
Check ID
C-65101r1184418_chk
Fix ID
F-65009r1184419_fix