STIGUI
V-261465CAT II — Medium severitySV-261465r996802_rule

SLEM 5 must audit all uses of the sudoers file and all files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory.

Rule version SLEM-05-654210 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information.

At a minimum, the organization must audit the full-text recording of privileged access commands. The organization must maintain audit trails in sufficient detail to reconstruct events to determine the cause and impact of compromise.

Check

Verify SLEM 5 generates audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to access the "/etc/sudoers" file and files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory with the following command:

     > sudo auditctl -l | grep -w '/etc/sudoers'
     -w /etc/sudoers -p wa -k privileged-actions
     -w /etc/sudoers.d -p wa -k privileged-actions

If the commands do not return output that match the examples, this is a finding.

Notes: The "-k" allows for specifying an arbitrary identifier. The string following "-k" does not need to match the example output above.

Fix

Configure SLEM 5 to generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to access the "/etc/sudoers" file and files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory.

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

-w /etc/sudoers -p wa -k privileged-actions

-w /etc/sudoers.d -p wa -k privileged-actions

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-261465
Group title
SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015
Rule ID
SV-261465r996802_rule
Check ID
C-65194r996800_chk
Fix ID
F-65102r996801_fix