PGS9-00-002300 - The audit information produced by PostgreSQL must be protected from unauthorized deletion - log directory

Warning! Audit Deprecated

This audit has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update.

Information

If audit data were to become compromised, then competent forensic analysis and discovery of the true source of potentially malicious system activity is impossible to achieve.

To ensure the veracity of audit data, the information system and/or the application must protect audit information from unauthorized deletion. This requirement can be achieved through multiple methods which will depend upon system architecture and design.

Some commonly employed methods include: ensuring log files enjoy the proper file system permissions utilizing file system protections; restricting access; and backing up log data to ensure log data is retained.

Applications providing a user interface to audit data will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the data and the corresponding rights the user enjoys in order make access decisions regarding the deletion of audit data.

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

Deletion of database audit data could mask the theft of, or the unauthorized modification of, sensitive data stored in the database.

Solution

To ensure that logging is enabled, review supplementary content APPENDIX-C for instructions on enabling logging.

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA environment variable. See supplementary content APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA.

#### stderr Logging

With stderr logging enabled, as the database owner (shown here as 'postgres'), set the following parameter in postgresql.conf:

$ vi ${PGDATA?}/postgresql.conf
log_file_mode = 0600

To change the owner and permissions of the log files, run the following:

$ chown postgres:postgres ${PGDATA?}/<log directory name>
$ chmod 0700 ${PGDATA?}/<log directory name>
$ chmod 600 ${PGDATA?}/<log directory name>/*.log

#### syslog Logging

If PostgreSQL is configured to use syslog for logging, the log files must be configured to be owned by root with 0600 permissions.

$ chown root:root <log directory name>/<log_filename>
$ chmod 0700 <log directory name>
$ chmod 0600 <log directory name>/*.log

Item Details

Audit Name: DISA STIG PostgreSQL 9.x on RHEL DB v2r1

Category: AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 5e06a9f48cc7b048b28723ba4d195a2010f04c36e91886a9c260331bc4e5effa

Detections

Analytics

PGS9-00-002300 - The audit information produced by PostgreSQL must be protected from unauthorized deletion - log directory

Warning! Audit Deprecated

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details