Daily security report oddity...

[Mark Stapper]

Kurt Buff wrote:
> I got a daily security run email from one of my machines on Monday
> morning, with the following entry:
>
>      zmx1.zetron.com login failures:
>      Aug 30 06:57:17 zmx1 su: BAD SU mlee to root on /dev/ttyp2
>      Aug 30 09:42:17 zmx1 su: BAD SU mlee to root on /dev/ttyp0
>
> What's puzzling is that this account has been completely inactive for
> well over a year - this fellow is long gone, and I simply didn't clean
> it up - that's my bad, but that's not the puzzling part.
>
> I traced it down, and found out that he had not logged in on Sunday.
> The auth.log is, as you can see from the listing below, quite old. The
> entries referenced above are from two years ago.
>
> 	zmx1# ll /var/log/a*
> 	-rw-------  1 root  wheel  71845 Sep  1 15:42 /var/log/auth.log
> 	-rw-------  1 root  wheel   6087 Aug 29  2007 /var/log/auth.log.0.bz2
> 	-rw-------  1 root  wheel   5774 Aug 12  2007 /var/log/auth.log.1.bz2
> 	-rw-------  1 root  wheel   5795 Jul 24  2007 /var/log/auth.log.2.bz2
> 	-rw-------  1 root  wheel   6813 Jul  6  2007 /var/log/auth.log.3.bz2
>
>
> So, a couple of questions:
>
> Why would the daily security run pick up something from *two years
> ago* and only report it again today? The machine hasn't been rebooted
> in a very long time, if that makes a difference.
>
> Is there any way to prevent something like this happening again - or
> perhaps can I force the entry of the year into the date field for the
> auth.log entries?
>
> Kurt
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>   
Hello,

If you look at the syntax of the logfile, you will see no year is listed.
Most likely the whole file is parsed on security run. Since the logfile
has been rotated the 30th of august 2007, it's very much possible you'll
get all your messages all over again.
Perhaps it's wise to rotate you logfiles once a year just in case...
And it make no difference the machine hasn't been rebooted in a very
long time... (define "very long time" ;-)
http://uptimes-project.org/hosts/view/150 )


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