OL 8 operating systems booted with a BIOS must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.
Severity | Group ID | Group Title | Version | Rule ID | Date | STIG Version |
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high | V-248540 | SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048 | OL08-00-010150 | SV-248540r958472_rule | 2025-02-20 | 2 |
Description |
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If the system does not require valid authentication before it boots into single-user or maintenance mode, anyone who invokes single-user or maintenance mode is granted privileged access to all files on the system. GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for OL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or modify the boot menu. |
ℹ️ Check |
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For systems that use UEFI, this is not applicable. Determine if an encrypted password is set for the grub superusers account. On systems that use a BIOS, use the following command: $ sudo grep -iw grub2_password /boot/grub2/user.cfg GRUB2_PASSWORD=grub.pbkdf2.sha512.[password_hash] If the grub superusers account password does not begin with "grub.pbkdf2.sha512", this is a finding. |
✔️ Fix |
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Configure the system to require a grub bootloader password for the grub superusers account with the grub2-setpassword command, which creates/overwrites the "/boot/grub2/user.cfg" file. Generate an encrypted grub2 password for the grub superusers account with the following command: $ sudo grub2-setpassword Enter password: Confirm password: |