AIX system must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-215308	AIX7-00-002127	SV-215308r991589_rule		Medium

Description

This prevents attackers with physical access from trivially bypassing security on the machine and gaining root access. Such accesses are further prevented by configuring the bootloader password.

STIG	Date
IBM AIX 7.x Security Technical Implementation Guide	2024-08-16

Details

Check Text (C-16506r294375_chk)

Verify that the "root" account has a password assigned:

# cut -d: -f1,2 /etc/passwd | grep root

root:!

If the "root" account is not listed with an "!", this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-16504r294376_fix)

Assign the "root" account a password using passwd command while logged on as "root":
# passwd