I want to get a mail whenever a user is using "su -" to get root access.

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi

There five Unix admins are working in my company. so i want to monitor which user is using root access at which time.

so i want to send a mail automatically whenever a user is using "su -" to get the root access.


is it posibble.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

You could add the following to the end of your 'root' .profile. It will mail the 'root' account a message indicating an 'su' to the root account. You can change the mail address to be yourself if you wish.

WHO=$(whoami|awk '{print $1}')
[ "$(logname)" != "${WHO}" ] && \
echo "$(logname) has 'su'ed to 'root'"|mailx -s "NEW ROOT USER!" root

...

Of course, the '/var/adm/sulog' file will show you successful and unsuccessful 'su' events, too. This is the standard place to look for a history of these transitions.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kenan Erdey]

Hi,

a lot of possible ways are there. Some of them using monitoring programs like ovo, nagios. or you can use a script to monitor /var/adm/sulog and mail when su to root is reliased.

Sample script:

#!/usr/bin/sh

tail -f /var/adm/sulog |
while read line
do
case "$line" in
*root*) printf "%s\n" "$line" |mailx -s "switch to root" user@domain.com
;;
esac
done




Kenan.

[Dennis Handly]

>whenever a user is using "su -" to get the root access.

Do you care if the user leaves out the "-"? In that case JRF's suggestion won't work.

[Bill Hassell]

It sounds like you are having problems with root users making mistakes or violating security requirements. Start by verifying that there are no duplicate root users (possible root kit):

# logins -d

Then write a script that monitors /var/adm/sulog looking fir new entries.

Make sure that root's .profile has .sh_history enabled with HISTFILE=$HOME/.sh_history and a long HISTSIZE:

export HISTFILE=$HOME/.sh_history
export HISTSIZE=5000

Make copies of root's .sh_history in a secure location, perhaps on another computer.

Finally, all sysadmins must not use root to perform non-root tasks. A better choice is to use sudo which restricts the commands and parameters for privileged users. And of soures, everything is logged.

[Basheer_2]

Kumar,

This is the way we did.

disable root logins
for admins, create rootadm1 rootadm2 etc

then
grep for su for these uses from /var/adm/sulog

schedule in cron to e-mail the grep results.

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi Basheer.

Pls give your full script.

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi James R. Ferguson,

your script is well suiting for my needs.

But it is not working when we are using "su" instead "su -" as Dennis Handly said.

How to solve this.

And i want to get a mail when exit from root user.

And One more thing i want to add that i want to monitor that what are commands has been entered by sued user.



Hi Bill Hassell,

where we have to run your script like cron and when?.

pls explain.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Senthil:

> But it is not working when we are using "su" instead "su -" as Dennis Handly said.

Yes, that's true. You specifically asked for "...mail whenever a user is using "su -" to get root access" so that's the solution I offered.

I think Kenan Erdey's solution, using a continuous 'tail' of the '/var/adm/sylog' is a much better solution than mine for several reasons. Think about it.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kenan Erdey]

hi,

for monitoring what root does (after su -) you can check root's history file as mentioned before. or convert the system to trusted mode.

but if you think admins can delete history and you don't trust them, you can send logs to central log server.