Detections
Analytics
8.1.16 Collect System Administrator Actions (sudolog)
Information
Monitor the sudo log file. If the system has been properly configured to disable the use ofthe su command and force all administrators to have to log in first and then use sudo to
execute privileged commands, then all administrator commands will be logged to
/var/log/sudo.log. Any time a command is executed, an audit event will be triggered as the
/var/log/sudo.log file will be opened for write and the executed administration command
will be written to the log.
*Rationale*
Changes in /var/log/sudo.log indicate that an administrator has executed a command or
the log file itself has been tampered with. Administrators will want to correlate the events
written to the audit trail with the records written to /var/log/sudo.log to verify if
unauthorized commands have been executed.
Solution
Add the following lines to the /etc/audit/audit.rules file.-w /var/log/sudo.log -p wa -k actions
# Execute the following command to restart auditd
# pkill -HUP -P 1 auditd
Note- The system must be configured with su disabled (See Item 9.5 Restrict Access to the
su Command) to force all command execution through sudo. This will not be effective on the
console, as administrators can log in as root.
See Also
Item Details
Audit Name: CIS Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Benchmark L2 v1.1.0
Category: AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
References: 800-53|AU-12c.
Plugin: Unix
Control ID: 5e98e02d834fb7f95095be632806273767c093f6e720040fbfb1d866b575ba61