Question

Access Log files,

Asked by: wilslm

Hi there,

I created a user say call Test , here is what he did

say the test go to directory /etc
cd /etc
vi passwd

Is it possible as a admin to know that the user test went to directory called /etc? I knew they keep it in .bash_history  in every directory of home user, but the thing is the user can delete those file , so we don't have any record about the log.
Is it possibe to know ? 1. using all the functionality that come up standard  Linux or Sun OS
                                 2. or maybe is there any additional software that you know to see what the user open ?


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Asked On
2003-10-29 at 09:16:06ID20781938
Tags

access

,

linux

,

logs

,

vi

Topic

Linux Network Security

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: chris_calabresePosted on 2003-10-29 at 14:07:29ID: 9645965

The only way you can know for sure exactly what each user did is to turn on Kernel System Call Auditing.
The Center for Internet Security (www.cisecurity.org) has OS-specific Benchmark documents that tell you how to do this.
Warning: Kernel System Call Auditing will affect system performance and use a lot of disk space.

 

by: chris_calabresePosted on 2003-10-29 at 14:08:39ID: 9645970

Oh yeah, you can also try System Accounting, which has much less impact on the system than System Call Auditing. But it only captures shell-commands, not things done from inside a program (like inside a vi session)

 

by: learathPosted on 2003-10-29 at 14:11:04ID: 9645984

It is not possible with the standard logging on most unix systems.  You would want to consider some sort of accounting program to do this one of which is http://secureaudit.sourceforge.net/.

 

by: StevenSimPosted on 2003-10-30 at 05:08:22ID: 9649673

You can make use of Expect scripting to perform full logging of all keystrokes and output (including curses output). The script can be called from your system profiles. I have seen it in use. Unfortunately I do not have the script with me off-hand. The downside is that logs are huge.

I think what is most important is that your /etc/passwd has proper read-only permissions. If finer grained access is required, then use ACLs. Ultimately, since encrypted passwords are stored in the shadow files, read access of /etc/passwd is very much harmless.

 

by: ahoffmannPosted on 2003-11-01 at 05:35:44ID: 9662709

Chris knows to hide, don't tell the world, they won't use vi anymore ;-))

To jail a user shell's history depends on the shell.
In tcsh you can use /etc/csh.cshrc and set the histfile variable read-only, then in /etc/csh.logout copy the history to a save file.
AFAIK it works similar in bash.
This might not be very exact (as chris_calabrese already explained), but is a quick&dirty hack to catch the most.

 

by: wilslmPosted on 2003-11-01 at 12:30:48ID: 9663815

Thx guys for the input...
I recalled that when I did my first year uni .. I love using "Pico"
My instructor then came to me ... said "you should try to learn VI" (that was in University of Melbourne 1996)

Now in U.S ... I asked the techincal support regarding "Vi"
and he replied " Iam surprise that there is somone still using Vi"
(Univeristy of Michigan - Ann Arbor)

=-Life is changed-=

enjoy:)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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