STIGUI
V-234913CAT II — Medium severitySV-234913r958412_rule

The SUSE operating system must audit all uses of the sudoers file and all files in the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory.

Rule version SLES-15-030140 · STIG v2 · 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.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215

Check

Verify the operating system generates audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to access the "/etc/sudoers" file and files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory.

Check that the file and directory is being audited by performing 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 the SUSE operating system to generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to access the "/etc/sudoers" file and files in the "/etc/sudoers.d/" directory.

Add or update the following rule in "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules":

-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-234913
Group title
SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015
Rule ID
SV-234913r958412_rule
Check ID
C-38101r619008_chk
Fix ID
F-38064r619009_fix