RHEL-10-701250 - RHEL 10 must require authentication to access emergency mode.

Information

To mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information by entities that have been issued certificates by DOD-approved PKIs, all DOD systems (e.g., web servers and web portals) must be properly configured to incorporate access control methods that do not rely solely on the possession of a certificate for access.

Successful authentication must not automatically give an entity access to an asset or security boundary. Authorization procedures and controls must be implemented to ensure each authenticated entity also has a validated and current authorization. Authorization is the process of determining whether an entity, once authenticated, is permitted to access a specific asset. Information systems use access control policies and enforcement mechanisms to implement this requirement.

This requirement prevents attackers with physical access from trivially bypassing security on the machine and gaining root access. Such accesses are further prevented by configuring the bootloader password.

Solution

Configure RHEL 10 to require authentication for emergency mode.

Create a directory for supplementary configuration files:

$ sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/emergency.service.d/

Copy the original "emergency.service" file to the new directory with:

$ sudo cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/emergency.service /etc/systemd/system/emergency.service.d/emergency.service.conf

Open the new file:

$ sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/emergency.service.d/emergency.service.conf

Add or modify the following line in the new file:

ExecStart=-/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sulogin-shell emergency

Comment out or remove the ExecStart and ExecStartPre lines in "/usr/lib/systemd/system/emergency.service" as they can only exist in one location.

Apply changes to unit files without rebooting the system:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Item Details

Audit Name: DISA Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 STIG v1r1

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: f6963f143952d84c87ff8f9c50b390b66809bb6da0587ef08ad2f2750e1c91af

Detections

Analytics

RHEL-10-701250 - RHEL 10 must require authentication to access emergency mode.

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details