V-219834

Discussion

The WITH ADMIN OPTION allows the grantee to grant a privilege to another database account. Best security practice restricts the privilege of assigning privileges to authorized personnel. Authorized personnel include DBAs, object owners, and, where designed and included in the application's functions, application administrators. Restricting privilege-granting functions to authorized accounts can help decrease mismanagement of privileges and wrongful assignments to unauthorized accounts.

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A default Oracle Database installation provides a set of predefined administrative accounts and non-administrative accounts. These are accounts that have special privileges required to administer areas of the database, such as the CREATE ANY TABLE or ALTER SESSION privilege, or EXECUTE privileges on packages owned by the SYS schema. The default tablespace for administrative accounts is either SYSTEM or SYSAUX. Non-administrative user accounts only have the minimum privileges needed to perform their jobs. Their default tablespace is USERS.

To protect these accounts from unauthorized access, the installation process expires and locks most of these accounts, except where noted below. The database administrator is responsible for unlocking and resetting these accounts, as required.

Non-Administrative Accounts - Expired and locked:
APEX_PUBLIC_USER, DIP, FLOWS_040100*, FLOWS_FILES, MDDATA, SPATIAL_WFS_ADMIN_USR, XS$NULL

Administrative Accounts - Expired and Locked:
ANONYMOUS, CTXSYS, EXFSYS, LBACSYS, MDSYS, OLAPSYS, ORACLE_OCM, ORDDATA, OWBSYS, ORDPLUGINS, ORDSYS, OUTLN, SI_INFORMTN_SCHEMA, SPATIAL_CSW_ADMIN_USR, WK_TEST, WK_SYS, WKPROXY, WMSYS, XDB

Administrative Accounts - Open:
DBSNMP, MGMT_VIEW, SYS, SYSMAN, SYSTEM, SYSKM

* Subject to change based on version installed

Run the SQL query:

From SQL*Plus:
select grantee, privilege from dba_sys_privs 
where grantee not in (<list of non-applicable accounts>)
and admin_option = 'YES'
and grantee not in
(select grantee from dba_role_privs where granted_role = 'DBA');

(With respect to the list of special accounts that are excluded from this requirement, it is expected that the DBA will maintain the list to suit local circumstances, adding special accounts as necessary and removing any that are not supposed to be in use in the Oracle deployment that is under review.)

If any accounts that are not authorized to have the ADMIN OPTION are listed, this is a finding.