passwd and USER_CHAUTHTOK

Maupertuis Philippe philippe.maupertuis at equensworldline.com
Wed Aug 30 07:56:10 UTC 2017


Hi
On a new redhat 7.4, passwd -S to check the status of a user generates the following event  :
node=xxxxx type=USER_CHAUTHTOK msg=audit(28/08/17 16:34:18.632:54145) : pid=31134 uid=root auid=xxxxx ses=3866 msg='op=password status displayed for user id=ftp exe=/usr/bin/passwd hostname= xxxxx addr=? terminal=pts/1 res=success'

According to https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-documentation/wiki/SPEC-User-Account-Lifecycle-Events  USER_CHAUTHTOK means that the user  has successfully changed his password.
In that case no change were done, only a query as it appears in the msg field

The text format is even more disturbing :
On xxxxx at 16:34:18 28/08/17 xxxxx, acting as root, successfully changed-password using /usr/bin/passwd
The real action and the target user (ftp) is entirely lost in the text format.

I would say that this message should not have been generated in the first place.

If I really change a user password  by passwd games , I get :
node=xxxxx type=USER_CHAUTHTOK msg=audit(28/08/17 17:04:36.683:54299) : pid=774 uid=root auid=xxxxx ses=3866 msg='op=change password id=games exe=/usr/bin/passwd hostname=xxxxx addr=? terminal=pts/1 res=success'
and in the text format :
On xxxxx at 17:04:36 28/08/17 xxxxx, acting as root, successfully changed-password games using /usr/bin/passwd
On xxxxx at 17:04:36 28/08/17 xxxxx, acting as root, successfully changed-password using /usr/bin/passwd
This time the first line describes accurately what happened but I find the second one misleading since it is really the same command and not an additional change.

Please let me know if I missed something.
Philippe




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