STIGUI
V-258811CAT II — Medium severitySV-258811r958434_rule

The Photon operating system must protect audit logs from unauthorized access.

Rule version PHTN-40-000026 · STIG v2 · 2026-08-26

Discussion

Unauthorized disclosure of audit records can reveal system and configuration data to attackers, thus compromising its confidentiality.

Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, audit reports) needed to successfully audit operating system activity.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029

Check

At the command line, run the following command to find the current auditd log location:

# grep -iw log_file /etc/audit/auditd.conf

Example result:

log_file = /var/log/audit/audit.log

At the command line, run the following command using the file found in the previous step to verify auditd logs are protected from authorized access:

# stat -c "%n %U:%G %a" /var/log/audit/audit.log

Example result:

/var/log/audit/audit.log root:root 600

If the audit log file does not have permissions set to "0600", this is a finding. If the audit log file is not owned by root, this is a finding. If the audit log file is not group owned by root, this is a finding.

Fix

At the command line, run the following commands:

#  chmod 0600 <audit log file>
#  chown root:root <audit log file>

Replace <audit log file> with the target log file.

Note: If "log_group" is configured in the auditd.conf file and set to something other than "root", the permissions changes will not be persistent.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-258811
Group title
SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027
Rule ID
SV-258811r958434_rule
Check ID
C-62551r933492_chk
Fix ID
F-62460r933493_fix