STIGUI
V-253034CAT II — Medium severitySV-253034r991570_rule

The TOSS audit system must be configured to audit any usage of the "fsetxattr" system call.

Rule version TOSS-04-030990 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-20

Discussion

Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one.

Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter). "Fsetxattr" is a system call used to set an extended attribute value. This is used to set extended attributes on a file.

When a user logs on, the AUID is set to the UID of the account that is being authenticated. Daemons are not user sessions and have the loginuid set to "-1." The auid representation is an unsigned 32-bit integer, which equals "4294967295." The audit system interprets "-1", "4294967295", and "unset" in the same way.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000458-GPOS-00203, SRG-OS-000463-GPOS-00207

Check

Verify if TOSS is configured to audit the execution of the "fsetxattr" system call, by running the following command:

$ sudo grep -w fsetxattr /etc/audit/audit.rules

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S fsetxattr -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k perm_mod -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S fsetxattr -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k perm_mod

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S fsetxattr -F auid=0 -k perm_mod -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S fsetxattr -F auid=0 -k perm_mod

If the command does not return all lines, or the lines are commented out, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure TOSS to audit the execution of the "fsetxattr" system call, by adding or updating the following lines to "/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.rules":

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S fsetxattr -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k perm_mod -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S fsetxattr -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=unset -k perm_mod

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S fsetxattr -F auid=0 -k perm_mod -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S fsetxattr -F auid=0 -k perm_mod

The audit daemon must be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-253034
Group title
SRG-OS-000458-GPOS-00203
Rule ID
SV-253034r991570_rule
Check ID
C-56487r824772_chk
Fix ID
F-56437r824773_fix