SLEM 5 must audit all uses of the sudoers file and all files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| medium | V-261465 | SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015 | SLEM-05-654210 | SV-261465r996802_rule | 2026-02-10 | 1 |
Description
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.
ℹ️ 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