Vulnerability Discussion

DOD-approved certificates must be installed to the System Keychain so they will be available to all users.

For user certificates, each organization obtains certificates from an approved, shared service provider, as required by OMB policy. For federal agencies operating a legacy public key infrastructure cross-certified with the Federal Bridge Certification Authority at medium assurance or higher, this Certification Authority will suffice. This control focuses on certificates with a visibility external to the information system and does not include certificates related to internal system operations; for example, application-specific time services. Use of weak or untested encryption algorithms undermines the purposes of using encryption to protect data. The operating system must implement cryptographic modules adhering to the higher standards approved by the federal government since this provides assurance they have been tested and validated.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000066-GPOS-00034, SRG-OS-000478-GPOS-00223

Check

Verify the macOS system is configured with approved DOD certificates with the following command:

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/security dump-keychain | /usr/bin/grep labl | /usr/bin/awk -F\" '{ print $4 }'

If this list contains unapproved certificates, this is a finding.

Fix

Configure the macOS system with approved DOD certificates from the appropriate authority. Use Keychain Access from "/Applications/Utilities" to add certificates to the System Keychain or build a certificate root trust payload as described in the supplemental documentation supplied in this STIG package.