Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition -A Hands on Guide
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5.14. Blocking; su to root, by one and sundry

The su Substitute User command allows you to become other existing users on the system. For example you can temporarily become root and execute commands as the super-user root. If you don't want anyone to su to root or restrict su command to certain users then add the following two lines to the top of your su configuration file in the /etc/pam.d/ directory. We highly recommend that you limit the person allowed to su to the root account.

  1. Edit the su file vi /etc/pam.d/su and add the following two lines to the top of the file: 
    
               auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_rootok.so debug
               auth required /lib/security/pam_wheel.so group=wheel
    After adding the two lines above, the /etc/pam.d/su file should look like this: 
    
               #%PAM-1.0
               auth	      sufficient   	/lib/security/pam_rootok.so debug
               auth             required    	/lib/security/pam_wheel.so group=wheel
               auth       	required     	/lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow nullok
               account    	required     	/lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
               password   	required     	/lib/security/pam_cracklib.so
               password   	required     	/lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow use_authtok nullok
               session    	required     	/lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
               session    	optional     	/lib/security/pam_xauth.so
    Which mean only those who are a member of the wheel group can su to root; it also includes logging. Note that the wheel group is a special account on your system that can be used for this purpose. You cannot use any group name you want to make this hack. This hack combined with specifying which TTY devices root is allowed to login on will improve your security a lot on the system.

  2. Now that we have defined the wheel group in our /etc/pam.d/su file configuration, it is time to add some users allowed to su to root account. If you want to make, for example, the user admin a member of the wheel group, and thus be able to su to root, use the following command: 
    
               [root@deep] /# usermod -G10 admin

    • Which means G is a list of supplementary groups,

    • Where the user is also a member of, 10 is the numeric value of the user's ID wheel,

    • admin is the user we want to add to wheel group.

    Use the same command above for all users on your system you want to be able to su to root account. If you can't su in a GNOME terminal, it's because you've used the wrong terminal. So don't think that this advice simply doesn't work because of a terminal problem!.

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