RHEL-08-010140 - RHEL 8 operating systems booted with United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) implemented must require authentication upon booting into single-user mode and maintenance. - superusers

Information

If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu.

Solution

Configure the system to require a grub bootloader password for the grub superuser account.

Generate an encrypted grub2 password for the grub superuser account with the following command:

$ sudo grub2-setpassword
Enter password:
Confirm password:

Edit the /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg file and add or modify the following lines in the '### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/01_users ###' section:

set superusers='[someuniquestringhere]'
export superusers

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_8_V1R1_STIG.zip

Item Details

References: CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000213, Rule-ID|SV-230234r599732_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-08-010140, Vuln-ID|V-230234

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 09e6f9c7d490c647c8b841bb56429636df3d53a402526cf8ef9e456629b37725