Making sense of C2 audit log data

[tony drake]

I have a large number of servers and am trying to upgrade the security on them. I want to be able to take the information from the C2 audit logs, along with the info from the logging in syslog (inetd -l for connection logging) to make determinations about possible security breaches. I have a rule based host IDS that will process the logs for me.

THe problem is that the audit logs are binary, and, when I look at them (using audisp) I get 20K+ lines for each user, much of which is coded in terms of system calls, process ID, and other factors that make it look more like gibberish than a security log. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to use these logs to effectively audit systems. (I called HP and all they could tell me was tha tthey had used the logs to help customers who had been hacked -- too little too late for what I need -- but that there was no direct way to use them.) I am using Axent's intruder alert 3.5 as the IDS.

Thanks in advance
Tony Drake

[James R. Ferguson]

Tony:

As a first approximation, try 'strings' (see man strings). For example:

# strings /tmp/binary > /tmp/ascii

...JRF...

[Tom Danzig]

You may want to set up auding of only those events which you feel are necessary. The default detting log a lot of info you probably don't need to know. Check man page on audevent.

[tony drake]

Maybe I was unclear. I can extract the actual auditfile data by using

audisp -u user /.secure/etc/audfile1

the information I need is of a more general nature: I want to take a log entry that says something like:
time pid e event ppid aid ruid rgid euid egid tty
000920 10:50:20 8714 S 57 8325 1097 0 3 0 3 pts/td

[Event = utssys User=u7616 Real grp=sys Eff.grp=sys ]
Return Value =0
Param #1 (addr of char)=2139043656

which is what comes out of the default auditing

And get back something like:

user abc123 : cd home 10:50AM
The latter is useful, the former is not in a usable format.

I hope this clears up the question: now does someone have an answer?

Tony