User Auditing

[Georgios Magklaras]

  Auditing keystrokes will not always reveal the whole picture and is 
VERY intrusive for people. How are you going to correlate (and prove) 
that when you type something like http://www.abadsite.com , you are 
typing it on the descriptor of the web browser and not a text word 
processor. Too much noise for the data and too much invasion to privacy, 
never saw the point really apart from folk that due keystroke based user 
authentication, which is very error prone and it logs only some 
keystrokes to work, not everything.

GM

On 09/23/2010 05:41 PM, Marti, Robert wrote:
> I'm a fan of auditing root keystrokes and shipping them off the box - you can see what happens if your server gets compromised or if you have a disgruntled employee by setting up alerts on the log correlation box.  Plus it allows a historical view of an event that bash_history doesn't always - especially if the admin doesn't use a shell that has a history.  Auditing normal users, however, typically isn't worth it.
>
> Rob Marti
> Systems Administrator
> Sam Houston State University
> 936-294-3804 // rob at shsu.edu
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-
>> bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of m.roth at 5-cent.us
>> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 10:29 AM
>> To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
>> Subject: RE: User Auditing
>>
>> Marti, Robert wrote:
>>> I haven't tried them, but do these track executing shell commands from
>>> inside vim or other editors?  Or other ways of running commands?
>>> (write a script, run it, delete the script)
>>>
>> It also strikes me as a) a great way to create an overwhelming amount of
>> data; b) useless - consider the user edits a script, suspends the editing
>> session, runs the script, forgrounds the editing session, and undoes
>> whatever code they put in. Oh, and c) over-the-top Big Brother; I mean,
>> there's oversight, and there's this: if there's this mistrust of the employees,
>> then perhaps management should either hire trustworthy employees, or
>> only allow trusted employees to work on the systems.
>>
>>            mark, *not* a fan of the idea.
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-
>>>> bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Zbynek Vymazal
>>>> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 9:20 AM
>>>> To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
>>>> Subject: RE: User Auditing
>>>>
>>>> Hi Rob,
>>>>
>>>> I'm logging command history of every user to remote syslog server. It
>>>> requires two steps on client side:
>>>>
>>>> 1) Add following function to /etc/profile:
>>>>
>>>> function history_to_syslog
>>>> {
>>>>     declare command
>>>>     command=$(fc -ln -0)
>>>>     logger -p local7.notice -t bash -i -- $USER : $command } trap
>>>> history_to_syslog DEBUG
>>>>
>>>> 2) Configure local syslog to resend logs to remote syslog
>>>> (/etc/syslog-
>>>> ng/syslog-ng.conf):
>>>>
>>>> # Send local messages to central syslog server
>>>>
>>>> filter f_filter7   { facility(local7); };
>>>> destination d_syslog_server { udp(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx); }; log {
>>>> source(s_sys); filter(f_filter7); destination(d_syslog_server); };
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Zbynek Vymazal
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-
>>>> bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Rob DeSanno
>>>> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 15:40
>>>> To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
>>>> Subject: User Auditing
>>>>
>>>> This should be an easy question.
>>>>
>>>> I use Logwatch on all of my RHEL servers and would like for it to
>>>> also report on all commands that any user had typed when logged in as
>>>> well.
>>>> Something along the lines of UID: Command to give me an idea of who
>>>> was doing what at any given period of time.
>>>>
>>>> I tried using snoopy but that gave me much more than I was looking for.
>>>> I'm
>>>> now playing around with psacct and logger but was curious to know
>>>> what everyone else out there uses to monitor user activity besides
>>>> looking into everyone history file.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks in advance!
>>>> ~Rob
>>>> --
>>>> redhat-list mailing list
>>>> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-
>> request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
>>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> redhat-list mailing list
>>>> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-
>> request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
>>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
>>> --
>>> redhat-list mailing list
>>> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
>>>
>>
>> --
>> redhat-list mailing list
>> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list


-- 
--
George Magklaras
Senior Systems Engineer/IT Manager
Biotek Center, University of Oslo
EMBnet TMPC Chair

http://folk.uio.no/georgios

Tel: +47 22840535