All manual editing of system-relevant files shall be done using the pfedit command, which logs changes made to the files.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
low	V-216470	SRG-OS-000480	SOL-11.1-090240	SV-216470r959010_rule	2024-11-25	3

Description
Editing a system file with common tools such as vi, emacs, or gedit does not allow the auditing of changes made by an operator. This reduces the capability of determining which operator made security-relevant changes to the system.

ℹ️ Check
Ask the operators if they use vi, emacs, or gedit to make changes to system files. If vi, emacs, or gedit are used to make changes to system files, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Advise the operators to use pdfedit or other appropriate command line tools to make system changes instead of vi, emacs, or gedit. Oracle Solaris includes administrative configuration files which use pfedit, and the solaris.admin.edit/path_to_file authorization is not recommended. Alternate commands exist which are both domain-specific and safer. For example, for the /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, or /etc/user_attr files, use instead passwd, useradd, userdel, or usermod. For the /etc/group file, use instead groupadd, groupdel, or groupmod. For updating /etc/security/auth_attr, /etc/security/exec_attr, or /etc/security/prof_attr, the preferred command is profiles.

✔️ Fix

Advise the operators to use pdfedit or other appropriate command line tools to make system changes instead of vi, emacs, or gedit. Oracle Solaris includes administrative configuration files which use pfedit, and the solaris.admin.edit/path_to_file authorization is not recommended. Alternate commands exist which are both domain-specific and safer. For example, for the /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, or /etc/user_attr files, use instead passwd, useradd, userdel, or usermod. For the /etc/group file, use instead groupadd, groupdel, or groupmod. For updating /etc/security/auth_attr, /etc/security/exec_attr, or /etc/security/prof_attr, the preferred command is profiles.