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auditing-cis-benchmark

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Updated 10-15 20:13

About this skill

Auditing CIS Benchmark Compliance

Assesses a self-hosted CockroachDB cluster against the CIS CockroachDB Benchmark v1.0.0 Level 1 profile. Evaluates 30 controls across six domains: installation and patches, system hardening and topology, logging and monitoring, user access and authorization, data protection, and CockroachDB settings. Produces a structured report with PASS, FAIL, and MANUAL REVIEW findings, including CIS Controls v7/v8 mappings with Implementation Group coverage.

Scope: Self-hosted CockroachDB deployments only. For CockroachDB Cloud clusters, use auditing-cloud-cluster-security instead — Cloud clusters have managed controls that supersede many CIS self-hosted checks.

Authoritative source: This skill implements the benchmark defined at https://github.com/cockroachlabs/CIS-benchmarks-crdb

Read-only audit: All operations are read-only. No cluster state, OS configuration, or files are modified during the assessment.

When to Use This Skill

  • Preparing for a CIS benchmark compliance assessment or external audit
  • Hardening a new self-hosted CockroachDB production deployment
  • Validating security posture against industry-standard benchmarks
  • Performing periodic compliance checks as part of security operations
  • Mapping CockroachDB security controls to CIS Controls frameworks
  • Responding to auditor requests for CIS benchmark evidence

Prerequisites

Access requirements:

Requirement Purpose
SSH/shell access to cluster nodes OS-level checks (systemd, swap, THP, file descriptors, certs)
SQL access (admin or VIEWACTIVITY) Cluster settings, user/role audit, logging config
Access to systemd service files Service configuration verification
Access to certificate directory Certificate permission and validity checks

Tools:

Tool Required Purpose
cockroach CLI Yes Version check, cert inspection, SQL access
systemctl Yes Service status, NTP verification
openssl Recommended Certificate validation and expiry checks
Standard Unix tools Yes ps, ls, cat, grep, swapon, ulimit

Audit Depth

This skill supports two audit depths. Choose based on your needs:

Depth When to Use What It Does
Quick Scan Periodic checks, CI/CD gates, rapid triage Runs one-liner shell/SQL commands per control, returns pass/fail
Full Audit Compliance evidence, external auditor requests, thorough assessments Multi-step procedures per control from the official CIS benchmark

At Step 0, confirm which depth the user wants. Both depths can be combined — run the quick scan first to identify failures, then run the full audit on those failures for evidence collection.

CIS Benchmark Structure

The CIS CockroachDB Benchmark v1.0.0 Level 1 profile contains 30 controls organized into six sections:

Section Domain Controls Automated Manual
1 Installation and Patches 1.1–1.7 (7) 3 4
2 System Hardening and Topology 2.1–2.7 (7) 5 2
3 Logging and Monitoring 3.1–3.4 (4) 1 3
4 User Access and Authorization 4.1–4.4 (4) 0 4
5 Data Protection 5.1–5.3 (3) 0 3
6 CockroachDB Settings 6.1–6.5 (5) 1 4

See CIS controls reference for full control definitions with both quick scan commands and full audit procedures.

Assessment Workflow

Step 0: Confirm Audit Scope

Before starting, confirm with the user:

  1. Audit depth — Quick scan, full audit, or both
  2. Target nodes — Which nodes to audit (all nodes recommended)
  3. CockroachDB service account — Username running CockroachDB (default: cockroach)
  4. Certificate directory — Path to TLS certificates (default: /var/lib/cockroach/certs)
  5. Data directory — Path to CockroachDB data store (default: /var/lib/cockroach)
  6. Log directory — Path to logs (default: /var/lib/cockroach/logs or <store>/logs)
  7. Enterprise license — Whether Enterprise features (EAR) are available

Record these values — they parameterize the checks below.

Step 1: Installation and Patches (Controls 1.1–1.7)

These controls verify binary integrity, systemd service management, TLS initialization, version uniformity, upgrade processes, and encryption at rest.

Key checks:

  • 1.1: Binary downloaded from official source, SHA-256 verified (Manual)
  • 1.2: systemctl is-enabled cockroach.service → enabled (Automated)
  • 1.3: No --insecure flag; certs directory exists with valid CA-signed certs (Automated)
  • 1.4: ps aux | grep -c insecure → 0 (Automated)
  • 1.5: All nodes run same version — quick scan via cockroach version, full audit via DB Console Node List and crdb_internal.gossip_nodes (Automated)
  • 1.6: Rolling upgrade runbook exists and has been tested (Manual)
  • 1.7: --enterprise-encryption configured with external KMS, keys not on disk (Manual)

Step 2: System Hardening and Topology (Controls 2.1–2.7)

These controls verify OS-level configuration: time synchronization, process isolation, network segmentation, memory settings, file descriptors, and privilege restrictions.

Key checks (run on each node):

  • 2.1: NTP/chrony active, offsets below --max-offset (Automated)
  • 2.2: One CockroachDB process per host (Automated)
  • 2.3: Dedicated subnet with restricted ingress on ports 26257/8080 (Manual)
  • 2.4: swapon --show | wc -l → 0 (Automated)
  • 2.5: THP set to madvise or never (Automated)
  • 2.6: File descriptor limit ≥ 15,000 for cockroach user (Automated)
  • 2.7: cockroach user has no sudo privileges (Automated)

Step 3: Logging and Monitoring (Controls 3.1–3.4)

These controls verify logging configuration, rotation, authentication event capture, and monitoring/alerting.

Key checks:

  • 3.1: Log directory exists, owned by cockroach, permissions 700 (Manual)
  • 3.2: Log rotation configured via CockroachDB config or logrotate (Manual)
  • 3.3: Both server.auth_log.sql_connections.enabled AND server.auth_log.sql_sessions.enabled = true (Automated)
  • 3.4: Monitoring system scraping metrics, alerts configured (Manual)

Step 4: User Access and Authorization (Controls 4.1–4.4)

These controls verify host-based authentication, password security, root user hardening, and centralized identity management.

⚠️ Control 4.2 (Full Audit only): Inspecting stored password hashes requires SET allow_unsafe_internals = true. This is a break-glass, audit-only operation — run only in a dedicated admin session by authorized operators, and reset immediately after with SET allow_unsafe_internals = false. Do not expose this to application workloads.

Key checks (all SQL):

  • 4.1: HBA has specific IP ranges, strong auth methods, reject catch-all (Manual)
  • 4.2: password_encryption = scram-sha-256, stored hashes are SCRAM format (Manual)
  • 4.3: Root restricted to specific hosts via HBA with cert method, activity audited (Manual)
  • 4.4: OIDC/LDAP enabled, identity mapping configured, local accounts minimized (Manual)

Step 5: Data Protection (Controls 5.1–5.3)

These controls verify backup encryption, recovery testing, and multi-region data localization.

Key checks:

  • 5.1: Backups use kms or encryption_passphrase, or storage-layer encryption enforced (Manual)
  • 5.2: Recovery procedures tested quarterly with documented results (Manual)
  • 5.3: Multi-region tables use REGIONAL BY ROW or zone constraints for data residency (Manual)

Step 6: CockroachDB Settings (Controls 6.1–6.5)

These controls verify certificate security, setting redaction, audit logging, session timeouts, and OCSP.

Key checks:

  • 6.1: Private key permissions 0600, certs valid 90+ days (Automated)
  • 6.2: Debug bundles use --redact, no secrets in logs (Manual)
  • 6.3: sql.log.user_audit non-empty, sql.log.admin_audit.enabled = true, security channels configured (Manual)
  • 6.4: sql.defaults.idle_in_session_timeout set (e.g., 15m) (Manual)
  • 6.5: security.ocsp.mode = strict or lax (Manual)

Report Format

Generate a markdown report following the structure in sample report.

Status markers:

  • [PASS] — Control is satisfied
  • [FAIL] — Control is not satisfied, remediation required
  • [MANUAL] — Requires human review; automated check cannot determine compliance
  • [N/A] — Control does not apply (e.g., EAR without Enterprise license)

Relationship to Other Security Skills

CIS Section Related Remediation Skills
1 Installation managing-tls-certificates, enabling-cmek-encryption
3 Logging configuring-audit-logging, configuring-log-export
4 User Access hardening-user-privileges, enforcing-password-policies, configuring-sso-and-scim
5 Data Protection preparing-compliance-documentation
6 Settings managing-tls-certificates, configuring-audit-logging

For a broader security posture assessment (covering Cloud and self-hosted), use auditing-cloud-cluster-security.

Safety Considerations

  • All operations are read-only. No cluster settings, OS configuration, or files are modified.
  • Shell commands use read-only tools: ps, ls, cat, grep, systemctl is-enabled/is-active, swapon --show, ulimit, openssl x509, openssl verify.
  • SQL queries use SHOW and SELECT only. No DDL or DML statements.
  • One exception (4.2): The full audit procedure for password hash inspection requires SET allow_unsafe_internals = true — this is a read-only break-glass operation that must be reset immediately after (SET allow_unsafe_internals = false). Only authorized operators should run this step.
  • No secrets are logged. Certificate private keys and passwords are not included in report output.
  • Privilege check: Some SQL queries require admin or VIEWACTIVITY privilege. The report notes any permission gaps.

References

Skill references:

Authoritative source:

Related skills:

Official CockroachDB documentation: