Need to capture the commands fired on Linux - linux

I would like to capture all the commands fired by a user in a session. This is needed for the purpose of auditing.
I used some thing like below,
LoggedIn=`date +"%B-%d-%Y-%M:%H"`
HostName=`hostname`
UNIX_USER=`who am i | cut -d " " -f 1`
echo " Please enter a Change Request Number for which you are looging in : "
read CR_NUMBER
FileName=$HostName-$LoggedIn-$CR_NUMBER-$UNIX_USER
script $FileName
I have put this snippet in .profile file, so that as soon as the user logs in to a SU account this creates the file. The plan is to push this file to a central repository where an auditor can look into those files.
But there are couple of problems in this.
The "script" command spools all the data from the session, for example say, a user cats a property file, It appends all the data of the property file to the auditing file.
Unless user fires the 'exit' command, the data will not be spooled to auditing file, by any chance if user logs out with out firing exit command, the auditing file will be empty.
Is there any better solution for auditing ? History file is not an option since it does not tell me for which Change Request number ( internal to my organisation) the commands are fired. Is there any other way just capture only the commands fired but not the output ?
Some of the previous discussion are here and here

I think this software exactly matches your need:
https://github.com/a2o/snoopy

Related

Skipping Sendmail's Queue

I've set up Sendmail so that all messages are delivered to /dev/null instead of being actually stored anywhere else. I'm trying to reduce the number of unecessary disk writes and since those messages are essentially removed I want to, if possible, skip writing them to mqueue. Is there any way to do that?
The closest I could think of is mounting a nullfs filesystem on the mqueue directory, but I'd like a "cleaner" approach using sendmail only. Is this possible?
Thanks!
Most likely you choose wrong way to solve your problem but anyway:
You can select discard mailer for all recipients in check_rcpt (Local_check_rcpt) rule set. It will act as equivalent of DISCARD in access table.
Add the following lines to sendmil.mc file, generate new sendmail.cf file and restart or HUP sendmail daemon.
LOCAL_RULESETS
SLocal_check_rcpt
# PUT TAB (\t) BEFORE $# !!!
R$* $#discard $: discard

Detect data flowing through a port in a bash script

I have data flowing through a Linux box and a custom command that prints the data as it flows to STDOUT (the screen). I want to detect if data is flowing and restart some processes if it's not.
Let's say my test file is "flowchk.sh". How do I use that in a conditional statement in a shell script? My plan so far has been to push the data to a file then check to see if the file has any data in it:
timeout 5s flowchk.sh > anythinghere
FILENAME=./anythinghere
MAXSIZE=5000
FILESIZE=$(stat -c%s FILENAME)
if (( FILESIZE > MAXSIZE )); then
echo "all ok"
else
restarteverything!
fi
This has run into problems because the timeout command doesn't terminate properly when using my flowchk script (never returns to the command prompt). So I either need help figuring out how to stop flowchk's execution after a period of time (or it will run forever) so I can test the temp file to see if there's anything there OR I need to know if there's a better way to approach this problem and I'm wasting time.

Using flock to lock file for X time

I am a Linux novice and currently developing a security system using Raspberry Pi 3 and MotionEye. To get notifications via e-mail, I am attempting to create a custom shell script that will send an e-mail if there is motion, lock for X minutes, then send another e-mail if there is still motion. However, I am having some difficulties.
I created a simple Python script named "send_email.py" using SMTP that works perfectly fine for sending e-mails when I execute it via command line.
The shell script (named "flock_email.sh") is where I run into troubles in a few regards:
Whenever I run flock_email.sh, it completely overwrites send_email.py. I have tried to change file permission so it is only executable by the user, but it still overwrites.
The flock command/function does not work as I intended or at all. I have looked all over the internet and tried multiple different codes, but none have worked. I have attached my various flock_email.sh scripts I have tried.
Not necessarily a problem, but I am a bit confused on what my "shebang" line should be. For flock_email.sh I have it as "!#/bin/bash", which I believe makes the script it executable, at least according to this. Do I still need to change the permissions via the command "chmod +x flock_email.sh"? The path is /home/pi, which is essentially the main directory of my Pi.
The different solutions I have tried:
In flock_email.sh, I have tried to directly change the file permissions to read-only instead of using flock, having it sleep, then changing the permissions back to allow execution of the file.
Multiple flock_email.sh implementations, as attached.
To summarize:
I need to execute send_email.py before locking the file flock_email.sh.
Once locked, it needs to stay locked for X time.
Does anyone have any pointers or suggestions? I have spent well over 15 hours tinkering with this and feel like I have gotten nowhere!
send_email.py:
#!/usr/bin/env
import smtplib
def send_email():
content = "Message I want to send to specified e-mail."
sender = "e-mail account that will send message"
pword = "password of sender"
receiver = "e-mail account that will receive message"
mail = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
mail.ehlo
mail.starttls()
mail.login(sender,pword)
mail.sendmail(sender,receiver,content)
mail.close()
send_email()
flock_email.sh (1):
#!/bin/bash
(
python /home/pi/send_email.py
flock -e 200
sleep [time in seconds]
)
flock_email.sh (2):
#!/bin/bash
(
python /home/pi/send_email.py
exec 3>/home/pi/send_email.py
flock -x 3
sleep [time in seconds]
exec 3>&-
)
flock_email.sh (3):
#!/bin/bash
python /home/pi/send_email.py
chmod 444 /home/pi/send_email.py # modify to read only for all
sleep [time in seconds]
chmod 755 /home/pi/send_email.py # modify to rwx for owner, r-x for others
The reason why man flock and all posts say to use > is because you're supposed to use a dedicated lock file, typically in /var/lock:
#!/bin/bash
exec 3> /var/lock/motionmail
flock -ne 3 || exit
python /home/pi/send_email.py
sleep 3600
This additionally fixes you sending your email regardless, before you ever check the lock, and aborts new emails instead of queueing them all up.
You choose the lock file name based on the scope you want your lock to have:
If you only want one email per hour, you can use something like /var/lock/motionmail because there's just one per system.
If you want one email for each user per hour, you can use $HOME/.motionmail.lock because there's just one per user.
You can use /home/pi/send_email.py if you want with <, but this implies that you want one email per hour not only for each user, programming language and script copy, but also every time you hit save and replace the file with your editor*
* Editors differ in whether they replace or overwrite a file

Check latest file updates in directory on linux using bash shell scripting

I have basic knowledge of linux bash shell scripting, right now I am facing a problem that is like following:
Suppose I am working in an empty directory mydir
Then there is a process which is created by a C program to generate a file with one word. (Exp: file.txt would have one word, "hello")
Routinely, after a specific period of time, the file is updated by the C program with the same one word "hello".
I want check the file every time when it is updated.
But the issue is that I also want my script doing some other operation while checking the file updates and when it detects file updates that it returns something for which I can use to trigger something else.
So, can anyone help me.
Also, some proof of concept :
while true;
do
func1();
func2();
check file is updated or not
if updated ; then
break;
else
continue;
You probably want the stat command. Do man stat to see how yours works. You want to look for "modtime" or "time of last data modification" option. For mine that would be stat -c%Y file. Something like basemodtime=$(stat -c%Y file) before the loop, modtime=$(stat -c%Y file) after func2(), and then if [ $modtime != $basemodtime ]; then to detect "updated".

Passing key material to openssl commands

Is it safe to pass a key to the openssl command via the command line parameters in Linux? I know it nulls out the actual parameter, so it can't be viewed via /proc, but, even with that, is there some way to exploit that?
I have a python app that I want to use OpenSSL to do the encryption/description through stdin/stdout streaming in a subprocess, but I want to know my keys are safe.
Passing the credentials on the command line is not safe. It will result in your password being visible in the system's process listing - even if openssl erases it from the process listing as soon as it can, it'll be there for an instant.
openssl gives you a few ways to pass credentials in - the man page has a section called "PASS PHRASE ARGUMENTS", which documents all the ways you can pass credentials into openssl. I'll explain the relevant ones:
env:var
Lets you pass the credentials in an environment variable. This is better than using the process listing, because on Linux your process's environment isn't readable by other users by default - but this isn't necessarily true on other platforms.
The downside is that other processes running as the same user, or as root, will be able to easily view the password via /proc.
It's pretty easy to use with python's subprocess:
new_env=copy.deepcopy(os.environ)
new_env["MY_PASSWORD_VAR"] = "my key data"
p = subprocess.Popen(["openssl",..., "-passin", "env:MY_PASSWORD_VAR"], env=new_env)
fd:number
This lets you tell openssl to read the credentials from a file descriptor, which it will assume is already open for reading. By using this you can write the key data directly from your process to openssl, with something like this:
r, w = os.pipe()
p = subprocess.Popen(["openssl", ..., "-passin", "fd:%i" % r], preexec_fn=lambda:os.close(w))
os.write(w, "my key data\n")
os.close(w)
This will keep your password secure from other users on the same system, assuming that they are logged in with a different account.
With the code above, you may run into issues with the os.write call blocking. This can happen if openssl waits for something else to happen before reading the key in. This can be addressed with asynchronous i/o (e.g. a select loop) or an extra thread to do the write()&close().
One drawback of this is that it doesn't work if you pass closeFds=true to subprocess.Popen. Subprocess has no way to say "don't close one specific fd", so if you need to use closeFds=true, then I'd suggest using the file: syntax (below) with a named pipe.
file:pathname
Don't use this with an actual file to store passwords! That should be avoided for many reasons, e.g. your program may be killed before it can erase the file, and with most journalling file systems it's almost impossible to truly erase the data from a disk.
However, if used with a named pipe with restrictive permissions, this can be as good as using the fd option above. The code to do this will be similar to the previous snippet, except that you'll need to create a fifo instead of using os.pipe():
pathToFifo = my_function_that_securely_makes_a_fifo()
p = subprocess.Popen(["openssl", ..., "-passin", "file:%s" % pathToFifo])
fifo = open(pathToFifo, 'w')
print >> fifo, "my key data"
fifo.close()
The print here can have the same blocking i/o problems as the os.write call above, the resolutions are also the same.
No, it is not safe. No matter what openssl does with its command line after it has started running, there is still a window of time during which the information is visible in the process' command line: after the process has been launched and before it has had a chance to null it out.
Plus, there are many ways for an accident to happen: for example, the command line gets logged by sudo before it is executed, or it ends up in a shell history file.
Openssl supports plenty of methods of passing sensitive information so that you don't have to put it in the clear on the command line. From the manpage:
pass:password
the actual password is password. Since the password is visible to utilities (like 'ps' under Unix) this form should only be used where security is not important.
env:var
obtain the password from the environment variable var. Since the environment of other processes is visible on certain platforms (e.g. ps under certain Unix OSes) this option should be used with caution.
file:pathname
the first line of pathname is the password. If the same pathname argument is supplied to -passin and -passout arguments then the first line will be used for the input password and the next line for the output password. pathname need not refer to a regular file: it could for example refer to a device or named pipe.
fd:number
read the password from the file descriptor number. This can be used to send the data via a pipe for example.
stdin
read the password from standard input.
All but the first two options are good.

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