Logging of client commands, possible?

[Nicolas Williams]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 02:43:47PM -0800, Dan Kaminsky wrote:
> > Regardless, activity logging, other than TTY logging, doesn't belong in
> > sshd, and tty logging can be done externally to sshd, with varying
> > degrees of difficulty depending on what facilities the OS provides.
> 
> The ugliness of doing this for each platforms begs for a SSHD solution.

I won't deny this :)

Talk to the OpenSSH folk about it :)

> Interesting point:  Disable tty-less modes, port forwarding, and direct
> command execution on a machine with no other way in but sshd (and no way
> back out) and indeed tty logging *does* capture the total set of available
> behaviors for that machine.  This was actually done for a rather critical
> machine providing access

Well, have you read Cryptonomicon?

I believe one can obfuscate one's tty session such that you might not
really figure out what was done merely through a keystroke replay.

> There might be some exceptions, but you just can't deny that it's certainly
> imaginable that it's more useful to see a TTY log than the output of
> "/bin/sh -x" on an arbitrary shell script...that's kinda my feeling about
> the interactive logs.  If nothing else, it's a critical adjunct to obtuse
> SAR logs.

I think a tty-log plus a history of exec*()s and open()s and creat()s
and so on would be a rather complete record, yes. But ultimately a
sufficiently nasty and savvy user can get 'round such logging (though the
obfuscation necessary might itself raise enough red flags that you could
catch such a user).

> --Dan


Cheers,

Nico
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