Linux Audit Files To See Who Made Changes To A File

Linux audit files to see who made changes to a file
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This is one of the key questions many new sys admin ask:
How do I audit file events such as read / write etc? How can I use audit to
see who changed a file in Linux?
The answer is to use 2.6 kernels audit system. Modern Linux kernel
(2.6.x) comes with auditd daemon. Its responsible for writing audit records
to the disk. During startup, the rules in /etc/audit.rules are read by this daemon. You can open
/etc/audit.rules file and make changes such as setup audit file log location and other option.
The default file is good enough to get started with auditd.
In order to use audit facility you need to use following utilities
=> auditctl - a command to assist controlling the kernels audit system. You can get status,
and add or delete rules into kernel audit system. Setting a watch on a file is accomplished
using this command:
=> ausearch - a command that can query the audit daemon logs based for events based on
different search criteria.
=> aureport - a tool that produces summary reports of the audit system logs.
nixCraft
! !
! !
Note that following all instructions are tested on CentOS 4.x and Fedora Core and RHEL 4/5
Linux.
Task: install audit package

The audit package contains the user space utilities for storing and searching the audit records
generate by the audit subsystem in the Linux 2.6 kernel. CentOS/Red Hat and Fedora core
includes audit rpm package. Use yum or up2date command to install package
# yum install audit
or
# up2date install audit
Auto start auditd service on boot

# ntsysv
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-audit-files-to-see-who-made-changes-to-a-file.html[5/11/2013 1:58:18 ]
nixCraft: 40.146 .nixCraft:

40.146 .
OR
# chkconfig auditd on
Now start service:

# /etc/init.d/auditd start
How do I set a watch on a file for auditing?

Let us say you would like to audit a /etc/passwd file. You need to type command as follows:
# auditctl -w /etc/passwd -p war -k password-file
Where,
-w /etc/passwd : Insert a watch for the file system object at given path i.e. watch file
called /etc/passwd
-p war : Set permissions filter for a file system watch. It can be r for read, w for write, x for
execute, a for append.
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How to keep a detailed audit trail of
whats being done on your Linux
systems
-k password-file : Set a filter key on a /etc/passwd file (watch). The password-file is a

filterkey (string of text that can be up to 31 bytes long). It can uniquely identify the audit
records produced by the watch. You need to use password-file string or phrase while
Uninstall files installed from a source

code tar-ball
searching audit logs.

In short you are monitoring (read as watching) a /etc/passwd file for anyone (including syscall)
that may perform a write, append or read operation on a file.
RHEL5: Linux Kernel kexec-tools bug

fix update
Wait for some time or as a normal user run command as follows:

$ grep 'something' /etc/passwd
$ vi /etc/passwd
Following are more examples:
Security Tip: Find out current working

directory of a process
Linux commands to help you navigate
File System audit rules

Add a watch on "/etc/shadow" with the arbitrary filterkey "shadow-file" that generates records
Red Hat / CentOS Linux 5.x: Perl

Performance Bug Fix Available
for "reads, writes, executes, and appends" on "shadow"

# auditctl -w /etc/shadow -k shadow-file -p rwxa
syscall audit rule
How to: Linux reset the permissions of

the installed rpm packages with
setperms option
The next rule suppresses auditing for mount syscall exits

# auditctl -a exit,never -S mount
How do I Drop or block attackers IP

with null routes?
File system audit rule

Add a watch "tmp" with a NULL filterkey that generates records "executes" on "/tmp" (good for
a webserver)
# auditctl -w /tmp -p e -k webserver-watch-tmp
syscall audit rule using pid

To see all syscalls made by a program called sshd (pid - 1005):
# auditctl -a entry,always -S all -F pid=1005
Linux Get List of Installed Software for

Reinstallation / Restore All the
Software Programs
Re-read The Partition Table Without

Rebooting Linux System
How do I find out who changed or accessed a file

/etc/passwd?
Use ausearch command as follows:
# ausearch -f /etc/passwd
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Where,
-f /etc/passwd : Only search for this file
-i : Interpret numeric entities into text. For example, uid is converted to account name.
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---type=PATH msg=audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : name=/etc/passwd flags=follow,open

inode=23087346 dev=08:02 mode=file,644 ouid=root ogid=root rdev=00:00
type=CWD msg=audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : cwd=/webroot/home/lighttpd
type=FS_INODE msg=audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : inode=23087346 inode_uid=root
inode_gid=root inode_dev=08:02 inode_rdev=00:00
type=FS_WATCH msg=audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : watch_inode=23087346
watch=passwd filterkey=password-file perm=read,write,append perm_mask=read
type=SYSCALL msg=audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : arch=x86_64 syscall=open
success=yes exit=3 a0=7fbffffcb4 a1=0 a2=2 a3=6171d0 items=1 pid=12551
auid=unknown(4294967295) uid=lighttpd gid=lighttpd euid=lighttpd suid=lighttpd
fsuid=lighttpd egid=lighttpd sgid=lighttpd fsgid=lighttpd comm=grep exe=/bin/grep
Let us try to understand output

audit(03/16/2007 14:52:59.985:55) : Audit log time
uid=lighttpd gid=lighttpd : User ids in numerical format. By passing -i option to
command you can convert most of numeric data to human readable format. In our example
user is lighttpd used grep command to open a file
exe="/bin/grep" : Command grep used to access /etc/passwd file
perm_mask=read : File was open for read operation
So from log files you can clearly see who read file using grep or made changes to a file using
vi/vim text editor. Log provides tons of other information. You need to read man pages and
documentation to understand raw log format.
Other useful examples

Search for events with date and time stamps. if the date is omitted, today is assumed. If the
time is omitted, now is assumed. Use 24 hour clock time rather than AM or PM to specify time.
An example date is 10/24/05. An example of time is 18:00:00.
# ausearch -ts today -k password-file
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# ausearch -ts 3/12/07 -k password-file
Search for an event matching the given executable name using -x option. For example find out
who has accessed /etc/passwd using rm command:
# ausearch -ts today -k password-file -x rm
# ausearch -ts 3/12/07 -k password-file -x rm
Search for an event with the given user name (UID). For example find out if user vivek (uid
506) try to open /etc/passwd:
# ausearch -ts today -k password-file -x rm -ui 506
# ausearch -k password-file -ui 506
Other auditing related posts

How to keep a detailed audit trail of whats being done on your Linux systems
How do I find out Linux CPU utilization?
Linux Setting processor affinity for a certain task or process
Further readings
Read man pages - auditd, ausearch, auditctl
Updated for accuracy.
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{ 48 comments read them below or add one }

James Musil
March 21, 2007 at 3:42 pm
In the line auditctl -w /etc/passwd -k shadow-file -p rwxa you mean /etc/shadow not
/etc/passwd.
REPLY
nixCraft
March 21, 2007 at 4:41 pm
James,
Thanks for heads up, post has been updated.
REPLY
GH Snijders
March 22, 2007 at 8:12 am
Very interesting article, thanks alot.

I did spot one small detail, though:
So from log files you can clearly see who made changes to a file using grep commands.
Grep is a tool to *read* files, not change them ;)
REPLY
nixCraft
March 22, 2007 at 8:29 am
GH,
Heh I was suppose to use vim as an example but somehow I did pickup grep. Anyway post
has been updated
Appreciate your post.
REPLY
Rodrigo
March 27, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Question, i need a file monitor to tell me which files are being used on a few folders, can i
use auditd? is it compatible with Redhat 7.3? is there a GUI to use with this?
If this is not what i need.. can you point me to what i need or something close?
REPLY
nixCraft
March 28, 2007 at 5:54 am
Rodrigo,
RH 7.3 does not support auditd; also a big security risk for such old disro.
Get Cent OS 4.x or FC 6/7
REPLY
Rodrigo
March 28, 2007 at 11:29 am
Sadly the box running RH 7.3 is a live production box for a multinational company, I cant just
get a new OS installed on that server, we will be at least another 6 months before migrating
to a new system.
Do you perhaps have an idea of what tool I could use to monitor files in a folder that have
been accessed during a period of time?
BTW great site.
REPLY
motumboe
March 30, 2007 at 7:22 am
Found this article following this link: http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2722

Two great blogs, my comps
:-)
REPLY
nixCraft
March 30, 2007 at 5:26 pm
@motumboe, thanks for feedback :D

@Rodrigo you can write your own perl scripts
REPLY
Ken
September 6, 2007 at 10:40 pm
10
When I try to set up a file watch, it fails. When I do an auditctl -l, i get this at the bottom:
File system watches not supported
Any ideas on whats wrong?
(btw, Im guessing that I can get around this by tracing syscalls based on the files inode
numbers, but thats messy, and hard to maintain)
REPLY
tiger74
January 25, 2008 at 2:23 am
@nixcraft,
Thank you for such a great article.
But, Im confused, it seems that there is no man page for the audit.rules?
11
@rodrigo,
You can use tripwire with similar function. It detects file changes.
REPLY
ike
April 27, 2008 at 7:49 pm
12
:-) Wow. This is great article.

REPLY
Ken
May 22, 2008 at 11:11 am
13
I got the same error:

File system watches not supported
Did you ever resolve this?
Thanks John
REPLY
Nguyen Dang
December 14, 2008 at 12:50 am
14
Hi, thanks for the article.

How do I redirect auditd to not generate log message but call a user-defined program (for an
selected event)? Is it possible?
Thank you very much.
REPLY
Relay
February 11, 2009 at 7:03 pm
15
In the description for the -p option, a is for attribute, not append the man page has a full
explaination.
-p war : Set permissions filter for a file system watch. It can be r for read, w for write, x for
execute, a for append.
REPLY
John Doe
April 3, 2012 at 12:51 am
Newer versions seem to use a for attribute changes, my manpage reads like this:
-p [r|w|x|a]
Set permissions filter for a file system watch. r=read, w=write, x=execute, a=attribute
change.
Nice article though, exactly what i needed. :)
16
REPLY
john
May 9, 2009 at 12:09 pm
17
Great article. Ive checked the man pages and am still left with two questions:
1. It doesnt appear that the options to the p switch allow for logging file deletions? How do
we log when a file is deleted?
2. The kernel does not allow us set a watch on the / directory. If I wanted to log all file
deletions, would I be best served by setting watches on all my top level directories
(bin,boot,dev,etc)?
Thanks again for the great resource!
- John
REPLY
J.C. Denton
July 3, 2009 at 3:44 pm
18
After a system restart or a manual one (sudo /etc/init.d/auditd restart) all my file monitoring is
gone. sudo auditctl -l says no rules then. do I have to save the rules to a textfile or
something? Please help (using (X)ubuntu 8.04 LTS)! ;-)
REPLY
Frans
July 20, 2009 at 6:40 am
19
Is this also working on Vmware ESX server 3.5? Because this is a modified RedHat
distrobution.
REPLY
Stef
November 12, 2009 at 9:28 am
20
Hi,
thanks for this article. Helps me a lot!
regards
REPLY
sushil
December 18, 2009 at 5:15 pm
21
hello,
good article..
REPLY
asdasdsd
# /etc/init.d/audit start
22
# auditctl -w /etc/passwd -p war -k _etc_passwd

# auditctl -w /etc/shadow -k etc_shadow -p rwxa
# vipw (make a change)
# ausearch -f etc_passwd
Not a lot of use this idea :(
REPLY
asdasdsd
23
/edit:
# ausearch -f etc_passwd
\
Had to escape the greater and less than sign because this comments section thought that it
was some HTML!
REPLY
Anonymous
July 5, 2010 at 9:04 pm
24
is it possible to use it from NIS.. we use ypcat

REPLY
Jagadeesh
July 9, 2010 at 5:07 am
25
Hi,
This is very nice article. In my company we have NFS mounted home directories. Anyone
can access files from anybodys home. This will help me monitoring who comes to my home
:-)
Thanks for this article
REPLY
Hello1971
July 14, 2010 at 2:03 am
26
Hi, Did this work on exported directory. I mean, if any one read/write a file through NFS, The
audit system will log them??
REPLY
nima0102
27
Good Article :):)

REPLY
Dave Marcus
October 7, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Is there anyway to place an audit on a directory? And yes its a very good article, I have it
28
bookmarked.
REPLY
Yzhar
29
Im a Varins inc eng that had research this stuff for a while.
Unix (any), lacks such abilities and the best it can do is audit pre define objects.
scale is poor and some file operations are missing.
We have successfully build such framework (for about any unix platforms).
it is running on hundreds production sites for 3 years now. and I can tell you it wasnt
easy.
I dont want to sound like a sales man (Im not), but hope I can save you some time if
you are looking for such solution.
btw,
very nice article.
REPLY
Aldian
30
You forgot to explain how to stop monitoring once not needed anymore
REPLY
Sandy
31
Does auditd work over NFS ? . I mean, if any one read/write a file through NFS, The audit
system will log them?? I have not been able to configure this. auditd captures read/write
access from FTP and even CIFS but not from NFS ? Anyone has any Clue ?
REPLY
Prashant
October 17, 2011 at 5:48 am
32
Hi Sandy,
Were you about to get the answer for your query..
As even I want to get statistics on NFS / CIFS / FTP etc..
please let me know if you got any tips !
thnx
Prashant
REPLY
Roumen Semov
December 16, 2010 at 12:39 am
Hmmm, appending text to a watched file does not show up in the audit logs:
echo hello world >> /etc/passwd
Any idea why?
33

REPLY
RG
May 27, 2011 at 5:00 am
34
You might need to turn auditing on by changing the default yes to no

at the bottom of the file /etc/sysconfig/auditd:
# This option disables syscall auditing by default. This can also be

# accomplished by auditctl -e.
AUDITD_DISABLE_CONTEXTS=no
Set to no for full audit functionality including file and directory watches and system call
auditing.
REPLY
DarenTay
February 25, 2011 at 8:04 am
35
If a user su to root, how do we manage that? Can we identify whos the original user?
REPLY
joe
March 21, 2011 at 5:43 pm
36
Daren Tay
For SU install sudo and which uses su log.
REPLY
Cristian Rusu
April 27, 2011 at 7:52 am
37
Hello
Is there any way to figure out what php script modified a file on the system?
I got a bug where all the images in some folders are converted to an black empty png and I
cant figure out what does this for months.
Thank you for any hint
Cris
REPLY
David
May 23, 2011 at 9:35 pm
38
Id change the permissions on the PNG files to read-only possibly by changing the
extended attributes if necessary and see what breaks. Might have to change the
directory permissions if the mysterious program is actually creating a new file and moving
deleting the old one as these steps dont require file permissions, just directory
permissions.
REPLY
Tha_Duck
May 26, 2011 at 11:38 am
# auditctl -w /tmp -p e -k webserver-watch-tmp
39
Shouldnt that be:

# auditctl -w /tmp -p x -k webserver-watch-tmp
?
REPLY
dreamingkat
July 9, 2011 at 8:10 am
40
according to the man page, a isnt for append, its for attribute changes.
REPLY
Funutation
October 13, 2011 at 5:45 pm
41
anyone know whether SELinux includes these features? I assume that it does, and does
even more but I cannot find details (easily :-)
thanx
REPLY
ceooph
42
Hi,
Thanks for this article and your whole site. I have a problem with auditd.
Can you audit a directory (yes) and all subdirectory ??
I want to audit a complete map point with folder, sub-folder, sub-sub-folder,
Thanks a lot for your help
REPLY
John Gonzalez
November 29, 2011 at 11:55 pm
43
Thank You!!!
REPLY
ritesh
June 4, 2012 at 11:46 am
44
HI,
I configured samba as a file server. Server is running successfully. I wanted to see logs
which user currently accessing a file and which file got deleted from user.
Is this possible in samba ?
Thanks in advacne.
Ritesh
REPLY
thomas
October 19, 2012 at 3:26 am
i have set up my audit.rules file.
45
when i start auditd, i get an output stating:

the audit system is in immutable mode. no audit rules loaded.
when i type auditctl -l it says no rules loaded.
i thought when i set up my audit.rules file and started auditd, thats all i had to do. after
reading this article, i believe there is more i need to do.
can someone elaborate on how the audit.rules file comes into play?
REPLY
ibeam7
November 28, 2012 at 11:20 pm
46
thomas
Check to see if you have
-e 2
at the end of your audit.rules file. If so, once you reload or restart your auditd service you
will not be able to modify your rules file without bouncing the server. If doing testing, its
best to use
-e 1
which just enables the rules but doesnt lock them.
REPLY
Kirk
March 26, 2013 at 11:14 pm
47
Is it possible to write rules to detect modifications to any file in /var/www with the name
settings.php? This doesnt work, but it captures what Id like to be able to do:
auditctl -w /var/www/vhosts/*/settings.php -k config-watch -prwa
Thanks.
REPLY
Sarfraz
Do we enable file auditing for files accessed from SFTP like winscp tool?
REPLY
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Tagged as: audit daemon, audit package, audit records, audit system, auditctl command, ausearch command,
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