17.8.1 (L1) Ensure 'Audit Sensitive Privilege Use' is set to 'Success and Failure'

Information

This subcategory reports when a user account or service uses a sensitive privilege. A sensitive privilege includes the following user rights:
- Act as part of the operating system
- Back up files and directories
- Create a token object
- Debug programs
- Enable computer and user accounts to be trusted for delegation
- Generate security audits
- Impersonate a client after authentication
- Load and unload device drivers
- Manage auditing and security log
- Modify firmware environment values
- Replace a process-level token
- Restore files and directories
- Take ownership of files or other objects
Auditing this subcategory will create a high volume of events. Events for this subcategory include:
- 4672: Special privileges assigned to new logon.
- 4673: A privileged service was called.
- 4674: An operation was attempted on a privileged object.
The recommended state for this setting is: Success and Failure.

Rationale:
Auditing these events may be useful when investigating a security incident.

Solution

To establish the recommended configuration via GP, set the following UI path to Success and Failure:
Computer Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Advanced Audit Policy Configuration\Audit Policies\Privilege Use\Audit Sensitive Privilege Use

Impact:
If no audit settings are configured, or if audit settings are too lax on the computers in your organization, security incidents might not be detected or not enough evidence will be available for network forensic analysis after security incidents occur. However, if audit settings are too severe, critically important entries in the Security log may be obscured by all of the meaningless entries and computer performance and the available amount of data storage may be seriously affected. Companies that operate in certain regulated industries may have legal obligations to log certain events or activities.

Default Value:
No Auditing.

References:
1. CCE-35524-8

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/14249

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL, AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

References: 800-53|AC-2(9), 800-53|AU-12, CSCv6|5.1, CSCv7|4.3, CSCv7|6.3

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: 3ecffeff99875925fcdc053c7f0c8b7f22ed9179f4ee1cac85e2499ba359e33e