2nd Round AuditRules Questions

[Steve Grubb]

On Tuesday, January 19, 2021 7:22:11 PM EST Joe Wulf wrote:
> 1.  The rules for monitoring '/etc/passwd', '/etc/shadow', '/etc/group',
> '/etc/gshadow' exist.  Shouldn't corresponding rules also exist for the
> same four files which also have a dash/hyphen appended to them (i.e.
> '/etc/passwd-', etc...)?

You can add them if you want to. But I'm not planning to add them to the 
audit repo. There are requirements around monitoring changes of security 
attributes. This is covered by auditing events hardwired in the utilities 
that update them such as shadow utils. However, an admin could also use vi or 
nano to directly edit the files. That is all the watch is for. The files with 
the '-' are not used for authentication or setting up any user subject 
binding.

> 2.  By adding 'audit=1' to grub kernel boot param's---can I then safely
> eliminate this piece from all audit rules:  '-F auid!=4294967295'?

It depends on your intent. But this has nothing to do with audit=1.

> Conversely, what harm would it do to 'just leave it'?

Your logs will be flooded by daemon activity instead of things that people do.

> It would, in some cases, satisfy certain vulnerability scanning tools
> seeking exact syntax compliance, right?

I have no idea about what anyone would be compliant to. So, its hard to make 
a blanket statement. If you need to audit daemon activity and users, then yes 
you would want to remove the '-F auid!=4294967295'. But your logs will fill up 
much quicker.

-Steve