STIGUI
V-256489CAT II — Medium severitySV-256489r958422_rule

The Photon operating system must be configured to audit the execution of privileged functions.

Rule version PHTN-30-000012 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-31

Discussion

Misuse of privileged functions, either intentionally or unintentionally by authorized users, or by unauthorized external entities that have compromised information system accounts, is a serious and ongoing concern and can have significant adverse impacts on organizations. Auditing all actions by superusers is one way to detect such misuse and identify the risk from insider threats and the advanced persistent threat.

Check

At the command line, run the following command:

# auditctl -l | grep execve

Expected result:

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S execve -C uid!=euid -F euid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -C uid!=euid -F euid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S execve -C gid!=egid -F egid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -C gid!=egid -F egid=0 -F key=execpriv

If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Note: This check depends on the auditd service to be in a running state for accurate results. Enabling the auditd service is done in control PHTN-30-000013.

Fix

Navigate to and open:

/etc/audit/rules.d/audit.STIG.rules

Add the following lines:

-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S execve -C uid!=euid -F euid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -C uid!=euid -F euid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S execve -C gid!=egid -F egid=0 -F key=execpriv -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -C gid!=egid -F egid=0 -F key=execpriv

At the command line, run the following command to load the new audit rules:

# /sbin/augenrules --load

Note: A new "audit.STIG.rules" file is provided for placement in "/etc/audit/rules.d" that contains all rules needed for auditd.

Note: An older "audit.STIG.rules" may exist if the file exists and references older "GEN" SRG IDs. This file can be removed and replaced as necessary with an updated one.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-256489
Group title
SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020
Rule ID
SV-256489r958422_rule
Check ID
C-60164r887139_chk
Fix ID
F-60107r887140_fix