SLES-12-010440 - SUSE operating systems with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) implemented must require authentication upon booting into single-user mode and maintenance.

Information

If the system allows a user to boot into single-user or maintenance mode without authentication, any user that invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all system information.

If the system is running in EFI mode, SLES 12 by default will use GRUB 2 EFI as the boot loader.

Solution

Note: If the system does not use UEFI, this requirement is Not Applicable.

Configure the SUSE operating system to encrypt the boot password.

Generate an encrypted (GRUB 2) password for a boot user with the following command:

# sudo grub2-mkpasswd-pbkdf2
Enter Password:
Reenter Password:
PBKDF2 hash of your password is grub.pbkdf2.sha512.10000.MFU48934NJD84NF8NSD39993JDHF84NG

Using the hash from the output, modify the '/etc/grub.d/40_custom' file with the following command to add a boot password for the root entry:

# cat << EOF
set superusers='boot'
password_pbkdf2 boot grub.pbkdf2.sha512.VeryLongString
EOF

Generate an updated 'grub.conf' file with the new password using the following commands:

# sudo grub2-mkconfig --output=/tmp/grub2.cfg
# sudo mv /tmp/grub2.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/sles/grub.cfg

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_SLES_12_V2R13_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

References: 800-53|AC-3, CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000213, Rule-ID|SV-217145r603262_rule, STIG-ID|SLES-12-010440, STIG-Legacy|SV-91841, STIG-Legacy|V-77145, Vuln-ID|V-217145

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 6d383a1d598bf478524d2f53b5d9cf283159de2f06f61529b53d1153cb4babe8