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CD16-00-007600 - PostgreSQL must generate time stamps for audit records and application data with a minimum granularity of one second.

Information

Without sufficient granularity of time stamps, it is not possible to adequately determine the chronological order of records.

Time stamps generated by PostgreSQL must include date and time. Granularity of time measurements refers to the precision available in time stamp values. Granularity coarser than one second is not sufficient for audit trail purposes. Time stamp values are typically presented with three or more decimal places of seconds; however, the actual granularity may be coarser than the apparent precision. For example, SQL Server's GETDATE()/CURRENT_TMESTAMP values are presented to three decimal places, but the granularity is not one millisecond: it is about 1/300 of a second.

Some DBMS products offer a data type called TIMESTAMP that is not a representation of date and time. Rather, it is a database state counter and does not correspond to calendar and clock time. This requirement does not refer to that meaning of TIMESTAMP.

Solution

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA and PGVER environment variables. Refer to APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA and APPENDIX-H for PGVER.

PostgreSQL will not log anything if logging is not enabled. To ensure logging is enabled, see the instructions in the supplementary content APPENDIX-C.

If logging is enabled, the following configurations must be made to log events with time stamps:

As the database administrator (shown here as "postgres"), edit postgresql.conf:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ vi ${PGDATA?}/postgresql.conf

Add %m to log_line_prefix to enable time stamps with milliseconds:

log_line_prefix = '< %m >'

As the system administrator, reload the server with the new configuration:

$ sudo systemctl reload postgresql-${PGVER?}

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_CD_Postgres_16_V1R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

References: 800-53|AU-8b., CAT|II, CCI|CCI-001889, Rule-ID|SV-261922r1000771_rule, STIG-ID|CD16-00-007600, Vuln-ID|V-261922

Plugin: PostgreSQLDB

Control ID: edff77abb51d2e7aa7baff0317b95fcc6f5ceb46700b66217acd5567090f6a84