5.2.3.2 Ensure actions as another user are always logged

Information

sudo provides users with temporary elevated privileges to perform operations, either as the superuser or another user.

Creating an audit log of users with temporary elevated privileges and the operation(s) they performed is essential to reporting. Administrators will want to correlate the events written to the audit trail with the records written to sudo 's logfile to verify if unauthorized commands have been executed.

Solution

Create audit rules

Edit or create a file in the /etc/audit/rules.d/ directory, ending inrules extension, with the relevant rules to monitor elevated privileges.

64 Bit systems

Example:

# printf "
-a always,exit -F arch=b64 -C euid!=uid -F auid!=unset -S execve -k user_emulation
-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -C euid!=uid -F auid!=unset -S execve -k user_emulation
" >> /etc/audit/rules.d/50-user_emulation.rules

Load audit rules

Merge and load the rules into active configuration:

# augenrules --load

Check if reboot is required.

# if [[ $(auditctl -s | grep "enabled") =~ "2" ]]; then printf "Reboot required to load rules
"; fi

32 Bit systems

Follow the same procedures as for 64 bit systems and ignore any entries with b64

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/15023