Description

At a minimum the audit system should collect file deletion events for all users and root. If the auditd daemon is configured to use the augenrules program to read audit rules during daemon startup (the default), add the following line to a file with suffix .rules in the directory /etc/audit/rules.d, setting ARCH to either b32 or b64 as appropriate for your system:

-a always,exit -F arch=ARCH -S rmdir,unlink,unlinkat,rename,renameat -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=4294967295 -F key=delete

If the auditd daemon is configured to use the auditctl utility to read audit rules during daemon startup, add the following line to /etc/audit/audit.rules file, setting ARCH to either b32 or b64 as appropriate for your system:

-a always,exit -F arch=ARCH -S rmdir,unlink,unlinkat,rename -S renameat -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=4294967295 -F key=delete

Rationale

Auditing file deletions will create an audit trail for files that are removed from the system. The audit trail could aid in system troubleshooting, as well as, detecting malicious processes that attempt to delete log files to conceal their presence.

Remediation

Shell script

The following script can be run on the host to remediate the issue.

#!/bin/bash

# Perform the remediation for the syscall rule
# Retrieve hardware architecture of the underlying system
[ $(getconf LONG_BIT) = "32" ] && RULE_ARCHS=("b32") || RULE_ARCHS=("b32" "b64")

for ARCH in "${RULE_ARCHS[@]}"
do
	PATTERN="-a always,exit -F arch=$ARCH -S .* -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=4294967295 -k *"
	# Use escaped BRE regex to specify rule group
	GROUP="\(rmdir\|unlink\|rename\)"
	FULL_RULE="-a always,exit -F arch=$ARCH -S rmdir -S unlink -S unlinkat -S rename -S renameat -F auid>=1000 -F auid!=4294967295 -k delete"
	# Perform the remediation for both possible tools: 'auditctl' and 'augenrules'
<ns10:sub idref="xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_value_function_fix_audit_syscall_rule" use="legacy"/>
	fix_audit_syscall_rule "auditctl" "$PATTERN" "$GROUP" "$ARCH" "$FULL_RULE"
	fix_audit_syscall_rule "augenrules" "$PATTERN" "$GROUP" "$ARCH" "$FULL_RULE"
done

Warning

This rule checks for multiple syscalls related to file deletion; it was written with DISA STIG in mind. Other policies should use a separate rule for each syscall that needs to be checked. For example:

• audit_rules_file_deletion_events_rmdir
• audit_rules_file_deletion_events_unlink
• audit_rules_file_deletion_events_unlinkat