The macOS system must be configured to shut down upon audit failure.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-268455	APPL-15-001010	SV-268455r1038966_rule		Medium

Description

The audit service must be configured to shut down the computer if it is unable to audit system events. Once audit failure occurs, user and system activity are no longer recorded, and malicious activity could go undetected. Audit processing failures can occur due to software/hardware errors, failures in the audit capturing mechanisms, and audit storage capacity being reached or exceeded.

STIG	Date
Apple macOS 15 (Sequoia) Security Technical Implementation Guide	2025-05-05

Details

Check Text (C-72485r1034303_chk)

Verify the macOS system is configured to shut down upon audit failure with the following command:

/usr/bin/awk -F':' '/^policy/ {print $NF}' /etc/security/audit_control | /usr/bin/tr ',' '\n' | /usr/bin/grep -Ec 'ahlt'

If the result is not "1", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-72386r1034304_fix)

Configure the macOS system to shut down upon audit failure with the following command:

/usr/bin/sed -i.bak 's/^policy.*/policy: ahlt,argv/' /etc/security/audit_control; /usr/sbin/audit -s