Detections
Analytics

6.4 Ensure Log Storage and Rotation Is Configured Correctly

Warning! Audit Deprecated

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

View Next Audit Version

Information

It is important that there is adequate disk space on the partition that will hold all the log files, and that log rotation is configured to retain at least 3 months or 13 weeks if central logging is not used for storage.

Keep in mind that the generation of logs is under a potential attacker's control. So, do not hold any Apache log files on the root partition of the OS. This could result in a denial of service against your web server host by filling up the root partition and causing the system to crash. For this reason, it is recommended that the log files should be stored on a dedicated partition. Likewise consider that attackers sometimes put information into your logs which is intended to attack your log collection or log analysis processing software. So, it is important that they are not vulnerable. Investigation of incidents often require access to several months or more of logs, which is why it is important to keep at least 3 months available. Two common log rotation utilities include rotatelogs(8) which is bundled with Apache, and logrotate(8) commonly bundled on Linux distributions are described in the remediation section.

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

To implement the recommended state, do either option 'a' if using the Linux logrotate utility or option 'b' if using a piped logging utility such as the Apache rotatelogs :

a) File Logging with Logrotate:

 - Add or modify the web log rotation configuration to match your configured log files in /etc/logrotate.d/httpd to be similar to the following. /var/log/httpd/*log { missingok notifempty sharedscripts postrotate /bin/kill -HUP 'cat /var/run/httpd.pid 2>/dev/null' 2> /dev/null || true endscript}
 - Modify the rotation period and number of logs to keep so that at least 13 weeks or 3 months of logs are retained. This may be done as the default value for all logs in /etc/logrotate.conf or in the web specific log rotation configuration in /etc/logrotate.d/httpd to be similar to the following. # rotate log files weeklyweekly# keep 13 weeks of backlogsrotate 13
 - For each virtual host configured with its own log files ensure that those log files are also included in a similar log rotation.

b) Piped Logging:

 - Configure the log rotation interval and log file names to a suitable interval such as daily. CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs -l /var/logs/logfile.%Y.%m.%d 86400" combined
 - Ensure the log file naming and any rotation scripts provide for retaining at least 3 months or 13 weeks of log files.
 - For each virtual host configured with its own log files ensure that those log files are also included in a similar log rotation.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/14223

Item Details

References: CSCv7|6.4

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 5ce46d3cde20837728ae3e57ca16b7c2b43faf40fd38279658c5915fc04891f9