Monitoring "root-level" commands

[Steve Grubb]

On Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:18:21 PM Warron S French wrote:
> My Special Security Team, not being UNIX/Linux savvy asked me if I could put
> into place audit rules that monitor "Root-Level" commands.
> 
> I don't know of any specific identifier for such a term, and the closest
> thing I could come up with was monitoring those files that fall under
> /usr/sbin/ and /sbin/; does anyone else have any thoughts about how to
> approach this task?

Typically this is handled by monitoring what root runs. One huge difference 
between windows and linux is that running one command may spawn 20 or 30 
scripts and helpers. So, its easier to use the keystroke logging to what the 
root user is doing.

To enable this, you would add:

session   required pam_tty_audit.so disable=* enable=root

to the pam stack for su if that's how admins get the shell. If sudo gives them 
shell access, then you can add it there, too. Sudo normally logs the commands 
and parameters that it runs. If you are given a shell, though, all it logs is 
it started a shell.

-Steve
 
> I figured I would use a rule such as:
> -w /sbin/   -p rawx  -k watch_root_commands                (I used rawx, to
> account for replacement by a hacker)