STIG ID: RHEL-08-010150 | SRG: SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048 | Severity: high | CCI: | Vulnerability Id: V-230235
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 RHEL 8 and is designed to require a password to boot into single-user mode or make modifications to the boot menu.
Configure the system to require a grub bootloader password for the grub superuser account.
Generate an encrypted grub2 password for the grub superuser account with the following command:
$ sudo grub2-setpassword
Enter password:
Confirm password:
Edit the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg file and add or modify the following lines in the "### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/01_users ###" section:
set superusers="[someuniquestringhere]"
export superusers
For systems that use UEFI, this is Not Applicable.
Check to see if an encrypted root password is set. 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 root password does not begin with "grub.pbkdf2.sha512", this is a finding.
Verify that a unique name is set as the "superusers":
$ sudo grep -iw "superusers" /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
set superusers="[someuniquestringhere]"
export superusers
If "superusers" is not set to a unique name or is missing a name, this is a finding.