RHEL 10 must require a unique superusers name upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.
Overview
| Finding ID | Version | Rule ID | IA Controls | Severity |
| V-281167 | RHEL-10-600010 | SV-281167r1166453_rule | CCI-000213 | medium |
| Description | ||||
| Having a nondefault grub superuser username makes password-guessing attacks less effective. | ||||
| STIG | Date | |||
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Security Technical Implementation Guide | 2026-03-11 | |||
Details
Check Text (C-281167r1166453_chk)
Verify RHEL 10 requires a unique superusers name upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes.
Verify that the boot loader superuser account has been set with the following command:
$ sudo grep -A1 "superusers" /etc/grub2.cfg
set superusers="<accountname>"
export superusers
password_pbkdf2 <accountname> ${GRUB2_PASSWORD}
Verify <accountname> is not a common name such as root, admin, or administrator.
If superusers contains easily guessable usernames, this is a finding.
Fix Text (F-85633r1166452_fix)
Configure RHEL 10 to have a unique username for the grub superuser account.
Edit the "/etc/grub.d/01_users" file and add or modify the following lines with a nondefault username for the superuser account:
set superusers="<accountname>"
export superusers
Once the superuser account has been added, update the "grub.cfg" file by regenerating the GRUB configuration with the following command:
$ sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg --update-bls-cmdline
Reboot the system:
$ sudo reboot