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

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 superusers account with the grub2-setpassword command, which creates/overwrites the /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/user.cfg file.

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

$ sudo grub2-setpassword
Enter password:
Confirm password:

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_RHEL_8_V2R1_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-3, CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000213, Rule-ID|SV-230234r1017053_rule, STIG-ID|RHEL-08-010140, Vuln-ID|V-230234

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 31259c1fba20456da215c6053e3aeb0ccba23147cca136fb1ad0b20329e82b19