user account disappeared

[J. Hellenthal]

Also 

ls -l /etc/*pass*

Should show you those. Appears you’ve missed them.

-- 
 J. Hellenthal

The fact that there's a highway to Hell but only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

> On Feb 27, 2021, at 15:23, Gareth de Vaux <security at lordcow.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all, one of my users in a jail has mysteriously half disappeared. I've renamed the user to 'lostuser', the password hash, and the process it's running to protect privacy below:
> 
> I suddenly can't log in over ssh:
> 
> sshd[22485]: Invalid user lostuser from XYZ
> 
> # su - lostuser
> su: unknown login: lostuser
> 
> # ls -ld /home/lostuser
> drwx------  8 1012  users  18 Jan 23 11:19 /home/lostuser
> 
> $HOME still exists but only showing the userid.
> 
> # egrep "1012|lostuser" /etc/passwd
> lostuser:*:1012:1000:User &:/home/lostuser:/usr/local/bin/bash
> 
> # egrep "1012|lostuser" /etc/master.passwd 
> lostuser:$6$9xxxxx/:1012:1000::0:0:User &:/home/lostuser:/usr/local/bin/bash
> 
> Entries are still in /etc/*passwd ?
> 
> # ls -l /etc/*passwd /etc/group
> -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   605 Nov  6 16:52 /etc/group
> -rw-------  1 root  wheel  4092 Jan 23 12:22 /etc/master.passwd
> -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  2621 Jan 23 12:22 /etc/passwd
> 
> This process is still running, which is a network server which is still functioning:
> 
> # ps aux | grep lostuser
> 1012      56261  0.0  0.1   44952   21288  7  S+J   3Dec20    9:52.21 /usr/local/bin/python3.6 /home/lostuser/xyz
> 
> also obviously showing the userid and not the username.
> 
> 
> # grep lostuser /var/log/auth.log
> ...
> Dec 31 10:56:34 ns1 sshd[43798]: Accepted publickey for lostuser from xyz
> Dec 31 10:56:57 ns1 sshd[44133]: Disconnected from user lostuser
> Jan 10 09:37:05 ns1 sshd[9679]: Accepted publickey for lostuser from xyz
> Jan 10 09:37:09 ns1 sshd[10241]: Disconnected from user lostuser
> Jan 23 11:19:11 ns1 sshd[45905]: Accepted publickey for lostuser from xyz
> Jan 23 11:19:14 ns1 sshd[46228]: Disconnected from user lostuser
> Feb 27 18:06:49 ns1 sshd[93323]: Invalid user lostuser from xyz
> Feb 27 18:06:49 ns1 sshd[93323]: Connection closed by invalid user lostuser xyz
> 
> 23 Jan 2021 was the last successful login, and later that day /etc/*passwd was touched due to me changing the
> password of a different user, confirmed as the only change from diff'ing against backups.
> 
> Last buildworld upgrade on 3 Nov 2020 (host and jail):
> 
> $ uname -a
> FreeBSD ns1.lordcow.org 11.4-STABLE FreeBSD 11.4-STABLE #0 r367290: Tue Nov  3 12:11:29 SAST 2020     root at lordcow.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
> 
> The last ports upgrade was 13 Feb 2021, before that I'm not sure.
> 
> The last entry in /var/log/userlog was 23 Jul 2020, and:
> 
> # ls -l /var/log/userlog 
> -rw-------  1 root  wheel  4202 Jul 23  2020 /var/log/userlog
> 
> 
> ie. timeline:
> 
> 23 Jul 2020 Last userlog change
> 3  Nov 2020 buildkernel/buildworld and reboot
> 3  Dec 2020 lostuser network server process spawned and still functioning
> 23 Jan 2021 Last successful login to lostuser
> 23 Jan 2021 Unrelated user's password intentionally changed with passwd
> 13 Feb 2021 ports upgrade
> 27 Feb 2021 Discover user doesn't exist anymore but still has entries in /etc/*passwd and a process running
> 
> Any ideas?
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