Hello,
On Friday, September 22, 2017 1:09:19 AM EDT Rituraj Buddhisagar wrote:
I have a DNS server for which the auditd was generating lot of system
calls
and flooding the logs.
Due to this the server was under heavy memory usage as audisp-remote was
hogging the memory. The log output for audisp-remote showed that the
syscall was 49. Then I got to know from ausyscall command that the call
number 49 corresponds to bind. Hence I have *excluded* the call to "bind".
I have put in below line in the /etc/audit/audit.rules
*-a exclude,always -S 49*
I have put the above line before section 10.2.2 which says "Feel free to
add below this line" (please note I am running Ubuntu 14.04 but I suppose
auditd implementation is same across board) .
Also know that the rules are looked at from top to bottom with the first match
winning. So, you would want this rule above whatever is causing events.
After the exclusion - I no more see the syscall=49 line in
/var/log/audit/audit.rules. So thats a success of sorts!
*Probem/Issue/Query now*: After the exclusion, I do see audit events for
cron , sudo etc. But I do not see a call for "vi" file open mode etc.
I'd need to see the rules to figure out what's wrong, but I have some hints
below...
*Background:*
log output earlier which was flooding the logs and giving message " *dns1
audisp-remote: message repeated 6613 times: [ queue is full - dropping
event"*
*log:*
*type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1506025977.586:46629194): arch=c000003e syscall=49
success=yes exit=0 a0=3 a1=7ffe540ecf20 a2=c a3=0 items=0 ppid=22337
pid=22338 auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 euid=0 suid=0 fsuid=0 egid=0 sgid=0
fsgid=0 tty=(none) ses=4294967295 comm="audisp-remote"
exe="/sbin/audisp-remote" key="root_action"*
The main question is what is the root_action rule(s)? Normally we add a
auid!=4294967295 to prevent daemons from causing events. Typically when it's
desired to get root events, its means that you want to target _people_ running
as root rather than normal system activity.
root@dns1:/tmp# ausyscall 49
*bind*
I do see audit events for cron , sudo etc. But I do not see a call for "vi"
file open mode etc.
Observation: I open file /etc/audit/audit.rules in vi editor and then close
it. Audit log does not show syscall=2
If you were wanting to record writes to that, you would use a rule like this:
-w /etc/audit/ -p wa
Earlier I used to see below output in logs, but I am not sure that
was for
which file opened in vi editor.
*type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1506025995.825:46633170): arch=c000003e syscall=2
success=yes exit=3 a0=5598f609a210 a1=200c1 a2=81a0 a3=0 items=2 ppid=21957
pid=22355 auid=1006 uid=0 gid=0 euid=0 suid=0 fsuid=0 egid=0 sgid=0 fsgid=0
tty=pts0 ses=361 comm="vi" exe="/usr/bin/vim.basic"
key="root_action"*
Typically, its expected to look at events through ausearch. It groups the
records into events. You can also use aureport to see summary information.
I did read a bit on auditd from below links. *Please let me know if I
am
missing something or are the calls getting audited in an expected way.*
I went through below links; *would appreciate if someone can help with any
references which are more lucid with example*s:
https://linux-audit.com/configuring-and-auditing-linux-systems-with-audit-da
emon/
I was not aware of that site. But some of the information appears to be dated.
For example, telling people to use pam_tally2 when they should be using
pam_faillock.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/ht
ml/Security_Guide/chap-system_auditing.html
Furthermore, I would like to read much on audisp-remote to send all these
logs to a central server. I do not find any documentation on that. I see
discussion on net where people are using rsyslog instead for that. Please
help with references/links if any.
Admittedly there is not much written. It is on my list of topics to blog
about. But I haven't had time for blogging lately.
-Steve