6.1.2.11 Ensure rsyslog CA certificates are configured

Information

CA Certificate is used to sign all of your other certificates. The CA cert must be trusted by all clients and servers. The private key must be well-protected and not given to any third parties.

The certificate authority certificates ensures that the client only trusts and connects to rsyslog servers presenting a certificated signed by the CA preventing data leakage or exposure in transit.

Solution

Edit rsyslog.conf or a .conf file in /etc/rsyslog.d/ to the correct path for the CA certificate:

Example

# certificate files - just CA for a client
global(DefaultNetstreamDriverCAFile=\"/path/to/contrib/gnutls/ca.pem\")

Note : Only distribute the ca.pem, NOT ca-key.pem (the private key). Distributing the CA private key would totally breach security as everybody could issue new certificates on the behalf of this CA.

Impact:

Proper certificate management is required to prevent misconfiguration and log forwarding failures until the trust chain is restored.

When it comes to certificate validity, keep in mind that you need to recreate all certificates when this one expires. So, it may be a good idea to use a long period, eg. 3650 days (roughly 10 years). You need to specify that the certificates belong to an authority. The certificate is used to sign other certificates.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/24932

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL, IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION, SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|AC-17(2), 800-53|IA-5, 800-53|IA-5(1), 800-53|SC-8, 800-53|SC-8(1), CSCv7|14.4

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 4b77e1f7d1586aa01bdae0187848cd5509181faf02e59ed2022459c674b24c8b