STIGUI
V-261449CAT II — Medium severitySV-261449r996754_rule

SLEM 5 must generate audit records for all account creations, modifications, disabling, and termination events that affect /etc/group.

Rule version SLEM-05-654130 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Once an attacker establishes initial access to a system, the attacker often attempts to create a persistent method of reestablishing access. One way to accomplish this is for the attacker to simply create a new account. Auditing account creation mitigates this risk.

To address access requirements, SLEM 5 may be integrated with enterprise-level authentication/access/auditing mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements.

Check

Verify SLEM 5 generates an audit record when modifications occur to the "/etc/group" file with the following command:

     > sudo auditctl -l | grep -w '/etc/group'
     -w /etc/group -p wa -k account_mod

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

Note: The "-k" value is arbitrary and can be different from the example output above.

Fix

Configure SLEM 5 to generate an audit record when all modifications to the "/etc/group" file occur.

Add or modify the following line in the "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules" file:

-w /etc/group -p wa -k account_mod

To reload the rules file, restart the audit daemon:

     > sudo systemctl restart auditd.service

or issue the following command:

     > sudo augenrules --load

Identifiers

Group ID
V-261449
Group title
SRG-OS-000004-GPOS-00004
Rule ID
SV-261449r996754_rule
Check ID
C-65178r996752_chk
Fix ID
F-65086r996753_fix